[uf-dev] (Citation Format) ISO Dates

[Mark Pilgrim]

On 12/23/05, brian suda <brian.suda at gmail.com> wrote:
> <abbr class="dt" title="200510">Fall 2005</abbr>
>
> The tricky thing is WHEN does FALL actually start, it is different
> between the different hemispheres, Fall in the US, is not Fall in Brazil.
>
> So when a publication date is simply FALL 2005, is there away this is
> handled during encoding?

Put that way, no, there is no general solution, because "Fall 2005" is
not a specific enough date to ever be machine-readable.  In practice,
presumably they publish at a specific time of year (i.e. do they
really publish their "Fall 2005" issue once in October and once in
April, for different hemispheres?  I'm guessing not) so figure out
which "fall" they're referring to and use that date.

> 2) Date References for works in the BCE. How do you reference the Great
> Pyramids? 4000BC.
>
> <abbr title="-4000" class="dt">4000 BC</abbr>

I can't speak for the ISO specification, but the IETF's RFC 3339
<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3339.txt> clearly specifies the limits of
the date specification in the introduction:

"All dates and times are assumed to be in the "current era", somewhere
between 0000AD and 9999AD."

So you're probably screwed.

--
Cheers,
-Mark