Microformats Wiki - User contributions [en]

hcalendar-issues

2009-09-01T06:23:03Z

Martin de la Iglesia: /* Issues */ new issue

<entry-title>hCalendar issues</entry-title>
__TOC__
These are externally raised issues about [[hcalendar|hCalendar]] with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues are REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

'''IMPORTANT''': Please read the [[hcalendar-faq|hCalendar FAQ]] and the [[hcalendar-issues-resolved|hCalendar resolved issues]] ''before'' giving any feedback or raising any issues as your feedback/issues may already be resolved/answered.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — [[User:Tantek|Tantek]]

For matters relating to the iCalendar specification itself, see [[icalendar-errata]] and [[icalendar-suggestions]].

See related [[hcard-issues]].

== closed issues ==
See: [[hcalendar-issues-closed]].

== resolved issues ==
Issues that are <span id="Resolved_Issues">resolved</span> but may have outstanding [[to-do]] items. See: [[hcalendar-issues-resolved]].

== Issues ==
Please add new issues to the '''bottom''' of the list. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

=== issues 2007 ===
<div class="hentry">
* {{OpenIssue}} <ins style="font-weight:bold;display:block">Update: see [[dtend-issue]] for current summary and options on this issue</ins> <span class="entry-title"><span class="published">2007-01-20</span> raised by <span class="author vcard"><span class="fn">[[User:AndyMabbett|Andy Mabbett]]</span></span></span>
<div class="entry-content">
*# <span id="dtend-date-plus1">Where <code>DTEND</code> is a date</span>, and not a date-time, it is required to be the day after the end of the event, thus: <code><nowiki><abbr class="dtend" title="2007-04-30">29 April 2007</abbr></nowiki></code>. However, "29 April 2007" is '''''not''''' an abbreviation of 2007-04-30; it is an abbreviation of 2007-04-29. The markup as shown is semantically incorrect and likely to cause problems for users and user-agents which read the title attribute, and not the text value, of the <code>abbr</code> element.
*#*The ISO date 2007-04-30 is directly equivalent to 2007-04-30 00:00:00, which is why it's used as the end time of an event occuring on 2007-04-29. In this fuller context then you can view it as an abbreviation of 'the end of 29 April 2007'. Authors uncomfortable with this could use <nowiki><abbr class="dtend" title="2007-04-29 23:59:59">29 April 2007</abbr></nowiki>, or be more specific with their times. - [[User:CiaranMc|Ciaran McNulty]] 09:21, 12 May 2007 [GMT]
*#**The ISO standard has 2007-04-29 24:00:00 expressly to mark the end of the day 2007-04-29 rather than the start of the day 2007-04-30. This seems far preferable to 23:59:59. [[User:Matthew|Matthew]] 15:22, 17 Jul 2007 (PDT)
*#* This certainly risks confusion. The abbr title includes different information than the content; different when read by a 'normal' user who does not know about the exclusive-end-date.
*#** The trouble is going to be with dates (rather than date-times). User expectation is different if you are talking about "3 o'clock", which really is a point-in-time, and "29th April", something lasting 24 hours. No problem saying an end time is 'exclusive', but an end-date can be either and is typically inclusive.
*#** Using a more precise <code>dtend</code> is just a workround, you might not really want to say to the second when an event ends (as in 2007-04-29 23:59:59). You might easily want to say it runs from the Wednesday to Friday without committing to precise times - or that the event is sometime on that Friday but you don't know when.
*#* Possible options could be:
*#** Include a note in the standard that contradictory markup such as <code><nowiki><abbr class="dtend" title="2007-04-30">29 April 2007</abbr></nowiki></code> is bad practice and should be avoided
*#** Make a break with the ical usage that end dates are exclusive.
*#** Make the meaning clear: <div><code><nowiki><abbr class="dtend" title="value=date:value=inclusive:2007-04-29">29 April 2007</abbr></nowiki></code></div> <div><code><nowiki><abbr class="dtend" title="value=exclusive:2007-04-30">29 April 2007</abbr></nowiki></code></div> <div>or maybe</div> <div><code><nowiki><abbr class="dtend;value=date:value=inclusive" title="2007-04-29">29 April 2007</abbr></nowiki></code> [[User:Webf2|Webf2]] 00:25, 13 May 2007 (PDT)</div>
*#* ACCEPTED BRAINSTORM SPECUPDATE. In practice (e.g. http://barcamp.org ) it appears all too often (thus easy) to make the mistake of assuming a dtend value is inclusive, and thus the last day of many events is truncated by a day. I am proposing a solution on [[hcalendar-brainstorming]] in an attempt to help this move forward. In short, introduce the syntactic sugar "[[hcalendar-brainstorming#dtlast|dtlast]]", which treats date values as *inclusive* for the last day of an event. Semantically "dtlast" is merely an override for any "dtend" property setting on that hCalendar event, with the aforementioned slight difference in handling. More details on [[hcalendar-brainstorming#dtlast|hCalendar brainstorming: dtlast]]. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 07:48, 1 Sep 2008 (PDT)
*#* REOPENING based on new data. It seems the number of instances that dtend is being used to indicate an inclusive end date has only increased in the past year, and by knowledgable authors as well. Adding a new property just for inclusive end dates may very well only confuse the matter. We need to seriously consider changing "dtend" to *be* inclusive for "date" values only, keeping its current functionality for datetime values (suggested by [[User:Webf2|Webf2]] above). This is probably worthy of documenting on its own page, something like [[dtend-issue]]. - [[User:Tantek|Tantek]] 05:40, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
</div>
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===Issues 2009===
<div class="hentry">
{{OpenIssue}} <span class="entry-summary author vcard"><span class="published">2009-09-01</span> raised by <span class="fn">[[User:Martin de la Iglesia|Martin de la Iglesia]]</span></span>
<div class="entry-content discussion issues">
* <strong class="entry-title">DURATION format</strong>. Is there a specification of the format used for durations? In example 4 (http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar-examples), the duration value is "PT1H". I guess "1H" is one hour, but what does "PT" mean? And this example doesn't work anyway; neither Google calendar nor Yahoo! calendar recognize this duration.
</div>
</div>

== Template ==

{{issues-format}}

== Related Pages ==
{{hcalendar-related-pages}}

User:Martin de la Iglesia

2009-09-01T05:45:56Z

Martin de la Iglesia: New page: http://www.biochem.mpg.de/iv

http://www.biochem.mpg.de/iv

hcalendar-intro

2009-09-01T05:44:57Z

Martin de la Iglesia: /* Example */ I'm not an expert, but I think for most applications, British Summer Time would be GMT+00:00 (DST changes are made automatically e.g. in Google cal. or Yahoo! cal.)

''This page is currently a working draft''

[[hCalendar]] is a method for adding additional mark-up to a page which contains details of one or more events, so that the event(s) can be identified by software, and indexed, searched or downloaded separately from the page itself. The events can be concert listings, conference sessions, class timetables - anything!

Suppose, for instance, that you're a fan of a professional sports team, which has twenty-odd matches in a season. Just before the start of the season, they post on their website a list of those matches, with dates, start times (which vary), venues, some notes (say, the type of match - league ("Football League Championship"), cup or friendly) and the opponents.

To add these to your diary or calendar program (Outlook, Lotus Notes, or iCalendar, for example) you have to cut and paste each one, a piece at a time – first the date then the start time, then the venue, then the opponent (as the event title or summary), the notes and so on. Even though each match lasts two hours, you also have to calculate the end time for each. It takes you an hour or two, to add all the events to your diary.

Wouldn't it be better if you could just click one button in your browser, or follow one link, and be offered the option to add some or all of the events to your diary, in one go? Well, that's what hCalendar lets you do.

==Example==

For instance, here's the (hypothetical) markup for a match from West Bromwich Albion's website, as viewed in early September 2006:

<pre><nowiki>
<tr>
<td>Sat 23 September</td>
<td>3pm</td>
<td>Away: Kenilworth Road Stadium</td>
<td><a href="http://www.lutontown.co.uk/">Luton Town</a></td>
<td><abbr title="Football League Championship">FLC</abbr></td>
</tr>
</nowiki></pre>

And here it is, marked up as a hCalendar event

<pre><nowiki>
<tr class="vevent">
<td><abbr class="dtend" title="2006-09-23T17:00+01:00">Sat 23 September</abbr></td>
<td><abbr class="dtstart" title="2006-09-23T15:00+01:00">3pm</abbr></td>
<td>Away: <span class="location">Kenilworth Road Stadium</span></td>
<td class="summary"><a class="url" href="http://www.lutontown.co.uk/">Luton Town</a></td>
<td><abbr class="description" title="Football League Championship">FLC</abbr></td>
</tr>
</nowiki></pre>

(note to editors - messy cludge for dtend - suggestsions?)

(The "+01:00" at the end of the time is the offset from GMT/UDT, indicating, in this case, Central European Time, but it could just as easily be adjusted to indicate, say, New York or Tokyo time.)

Note that both of these will appear exactly the same, when viewed in a web browser.

You can do more, and more complex, things with hCalendar, too, such as marking-up event details contained in prose rather than tables, and marking-up the venue as an [[hCard]].

==Using HCalendar events==

To make use of events marked up with hCalendar, you will need to use a browser which understands them, such as Firefox with the [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2240/ Tails-Export extension], or to visit a website which can decode them, such as the [http://technorati.com/events/ Technorati hCal events tools].

The West Midland Bird Club has [http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/diary/2006-09.htm a page of events marked up with hCalendar] which can be [http://technorati.com/events/http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/diary/2006-09.htm downloaded to your calendar via this link] - try it (you can always cancel, or edit, rather than opening, the resulting ".ics" file).

== Related Pages ==
{{hcalendar-related-pages}}