[uf-new] hAudio duration syntax (was: hAudio proposal: ITEM/TRACK)

[Scott Reynen]

On Oct 15, 2007, at 8:57 AM, Manu Sporny wrote:

> The corrected value should be:
>
> title="PT268S"
>
> OR
>
> title="PT4M46S"
>
> That field must follow the ISO-8601 standard.

I think the current consensus around ISO 8601 is that we should use  
the most human-readable valid syntax.  Of the two above, the latter  
appears to be more readable.  However, I think the following may also  
be valid ISO 8601 duration syntax:

title="PT04:46"

The Wikipedia entry on ISO 8601 says "Alternately, a format more  
based on the combined representation may be used: P[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD]T 
[hh]:[mm]:[ss]" [1].  Unfortunately ISO 8601 itself is not freely  
available, and few of the online discussions of ISO 8601 discuss  
duration syntax at all, so I haven't found another source confirming  
this syntax is valid.  But if it is valid, I think we should use it.

I'm not suggesting we should explicitly disallow any other valid ISO  
8601 syntax, but the vast majority of publishers will likely use  
whatever we use in examples, so I think it's worth establishing a  
preferred syntax and using it consistently.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Duration

--
Scott Reynen
MakeDataMakeSense.com