Dates & Times (was Re: Future of HTML)

On  6 Apr 98, David Norris wrote:

> > Machine readable dates usually end up inside elements where the machine
> > uses them... META, INS, DEL, etc.
> >
> > Where dates need to be human readable, I prefer to put something written
> > out like "April 4, 1998".
> 
> Excellent point.  Some machine readable dates are very human readable,
> though.  A format that is both easily machine and human readable would be
> preferable.  The ISO 8601 format isn't too bad, though.

Well, "human readable"  as in putting something in the text of a page 
like "This event will be happening June 4, 1999 at 4pm" or "This page was 
last updated April 7" etc.

If we're going to discuss a way to notate dates and times to make them 
more machine-friendly (mainly web robots,proxies,  intelligent agents, 
and browsers) then we have to think/discuss what machines will do with 
those dates.

o Translation is a separate issue from markup (although it would be nice 
  to have an element or style sheet attribute to recommend against 
  translating the contents... for instance, names of people, geographical 
  locations, or specific technical terms).

o Some attributes can already be marked up for machines to handle: as
  in http-equiv's for "Last-Modified" and "Expires" (an aside: any work
  towards adding the use of ISO dates in the HTTPD specs?)

o INS and DEL elements are useful but limited. When I get around to 
  looking in the archives, I'd like to dig out my proposals for DATED
  (dated material) and CHANGED (notate changes in a document)
  elements.

Rob