[uf-discuss] Appeal for Issues: Empty spans in value-excerption-pattern

[Rob Crowther]

2008/11/7 Scott Reynen <scott at randomchaos.com>:
> Not as a valid dtstart value, no.  The title attribute is only parsed when
> the value element is empty, so that would parse with an invalid dtstart
> value containing the entire sentence.  See:
>
Sorry, I mucked up my copy and pasting, this is what I meant:

<span class="dtstart"><span class="value" title="2008-11-04"></span>
Barack Obama was elected the first African American president of the
United States of American, and he was really pleased about it, on 4th
November 2008</span>

Basically I'm not clear how forcing the empty element to be the first
thing guarantees that it will then be close to the plain text date.
Forcing it to be anywhere would seem to guarantee there are situations
where it can't be close to where the plain text date is if the
original example is valid, because it's easy enough to have that
sentence the other way around.

Rob