Re: An approach to xsd:dateTime

On 28 Jul 2008, at 19:02, Jie Bao wrote:

>
> To explain a bit more for my objection to the proposal at the F2F3:
>
> "PROPOSAL: datetime literals with missing timezones are not in the
> syntax; tools MAY insert a timezone, but SHOULD produce a warning if
> they do so"
>
> The part I object is that missing timezone should be disallowed from
> the syntax. In many cases, a time zone is a default context, and as
> default contexts typically behave, it may be omitted from a
> description from this context. Tools may or may not be able to
> rediscover a missing zone.

Yes. That's part of the point. We can't guess reasoanble ones.

> The burden should not be on users to always
> provide such information.

Who else?

> My proposal is that treating missing timezone as partially specified
> datetime value. For example, "July 28, 2008" may mean a datetime value
> that is within a local time in the date of July 28, 2008 on any
> timezone on the earth. Its interpretation could be an interval of all
> such values in UTC, i.e., July 28, 2008 0:00:00 GMT-12 to July 28
> 23:59:59 GMT+12.
[snip]

I think it would be surprising for users to find what, I'm sure, they  
think of as a point get turned into an interval.

A sensible tool could propose interpreting missing times zones in a  
number of ways including UTC or intervals. I'd find it *really odd*  
if my tool interpreted a missing time zone as an interval. I'd be  
shocked, actually.

The asymmetry with how we handle other missing bits (defaulting to a  
point) would be striking. (Er...if that's we handle it.)

Bijan.

Received on Monday, 28 July 2008 18:25:16 UTC