[uf-discuss] human readable date parsing

[Scott Reynen]

On May 4, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

>> I'd invite you to document the list of every possible way to  
>> represent each month in plain text, and then let us know if you  
>> still think reading through such a list to figure out how to  
>> publish dates is easier for publishers.
>
> Maybe I've lost track of the original issue here, but: publishers  
> don't need to know all variations in all languages, just the  
> version in the language they're authoring, no?

Publishers need to know how to speak in a syntax parsers can  
understand.  With plain text standards, that requires listing every  
understood term.  In English, does the month standard use "August",  
"Aug", both?  In Japanese, is it "八月", "はち月", "はちが 
つ", "八がつ", "葉月", some combination of these options?   
That's just one of twelve months in two of the hundreds of  
languages.  I think this is clearly more complicated than ISO 8601,  
for both parsers and publishers.  But if you think it can be easier,  
go ahead and write up the month syntax in each language so we can all  
compare the plain text standard with the current recommendation.

Peace,
Scott