last-modified-brainstorming

2008-12-20T04:54:04Z

CotamOntac: dronerdomget

rololota
= "Last-modified" Brainstorming =

== Purpose ==
To specify the date of publication and the date of modification of a web page (or a part thereof) in a way that is both readable for humans and machines.

== Authors ==
* [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]
* [[User:RyanKing|Ryan King]]

== Semantics ==
Since both Atom and HTTP define the last-modified date (or its equivalent) as a "user-defined" value, this microformat should have the same semantics. In other words, the value should represent the last instance that the resource was changed in a way deemed significant to the publisher/author, which is not neccessarily the same as a file-system modified date-time. --RyanKing

== Possible class names ==

=== Class name considerations ===
==== Class names for the date of publication ====
* âdateâ: Dublin Core
* âpublishedâ: Atom
* âdtpublishedâ: As suggested by Paul Bryson for [[hatom|hAtom]]. See http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-December/002520.html

==== Class names for the date of the last modification ====
* âlast-modifiedâ: âLast-Modifiedâ used by HTTP 1.0 and 1.1, hCalendar
* âmodifiedâ: Dublin Core
* âupdatedâ: Atom 1.0 syndication specification

=== Different class name for page specific and item specific dates? ===

For example âpage-last-modifiedâ is used to indicate the last modification date of a page and âlast-modifiedâ for the last modification date of a specific item*.
However, this seems to be not a good idea. Other microformats leave it to the parser to pick the scope of the element, e.g. [[rel-tag]].

See http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-August/000726.html for a related discussion.

<nowiki>*</nowiki> This specific item is marked-up with a microformat, e.g: a microformat to describe blog posts may use âlast-modifiedâ to indicate when a blog post was last modified.

== Possible date formats ==

See [[datetime-design-pattern]].

== Issues ==
* 2006-02-13 raised by [http://microformats.org/wiki/User:Eron_Wright Eron Wright]
*# ''Last-modified dates are unsuitable as version numbers. As the HTTP 1.1 spec mentions, dates lack fidelity and are difficult to generate for dynamic content. A better solution is to use an opaque string, as HTTP does with the ETag header. Indeed, If-Modified-Since is deprecated.''


 

= Proposal (2nd, strawman) =
== Purpose ==

Many web pages (and parts thereof) state their publication and/or modification date in a human readable way. This proposed microformat specifies how this can be done in a fashion that is both human- and machine-readable.

=== Specifying the date of publication ===

The date of publication is enclosed by <code><abbr class="date-published[[#footnote1|1]]" title="''Date in ISO format''">''Date in arbitrary format''</abbr></code>, e.g:

<code>Published on <abbr class="date-published[[#footnote1|1]]" title="2005-12-29T14:39:12+0100">Thursday, December 29, 2005 02:39:12 a.m.</abbr>.</code>.

=== Specifying the date of modification ===

The date of modification is enclosed by <code><abbr class="date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" title="''Date in ISO format''">''Date in arbitary format''</abbr></code>, e.g:

<code>Last modified on <abbr class="date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" title="2005-12-29T14:39:12+0100">Thursday, December 29, 2005 02:39:12 a.m.</abbr>.</code>.

If no date of modification is present the parsers MAY use the date of publication as the date of the last modification.

==== <del> and <ins> ====
Authors MAY also use <code><del></code> and <code><ins></code> to denote the date of
modification, e.g:
<code><del class="date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" datetime="2005-12-29T14:39:12+0100">wrong words</del></code>.
The class value "date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" is implied for every <code><del></code> and <code><ins></code>
element which has a <code>datetime</code> attribute.

=== Multiple dates in a page (or a part thereof) ===

If multiple dates of publication are present on a page (or a part thereof)
the ''youngest'' date SHOULD be interpreted as the date of publication.

If multiple dates of modification are present on a page (or a part thereof)
the ''oldest'' date SHOULD be interpreted as the date of modification.

1 This class name is just a placeholder which will be replaced once we know a suitable name.

== Related ==
* ←[[last-modified-formats]]
* [[datetime-design-pattern]]

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last-modified-brainstorming