Re: Tag Proposal: DATE

David Woolley:
>
> This was previously proposed as a number element

Yep, <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002Nov/0110.html>.

>> Ideally the tag would be an aggregate of subelements that specify
>> the date in XML-friendly format,
>
> I feel that that violates the simplicity principle.

Well, it's pretty easy for the author--but not for an UA--to identify a date
or time and mark it up. Such an element would be easier to use than e.g. dfn
or var, and applicable on more pages.

> HTML is a simple markup language.  Use Docbook or more targetted languages
for
> more sophisticated markup.

That seems to be a (or your) argument against every suggestion of new
elements and attributes. Do you really think, HTML was "feature complete"?

> Nothing will encourage adoptions by the mass of authors,

Many authoring tools insert the last update date automatically. With
adoption by those usage would be promoted.

> In my view, to be consistent with the semantic markup principle, the
> only sensible approach is to make the main content of the element be
> an ISO date and extend style sheet languages to allow creation of the
> localised date.  That's also consistent with XML schemas.

That would be like <abbr title="i. e.">that is</abbr>. Plus I don't think
that many authors would like to use ISO dates in their text, which is the
fallback.

> Overall, I think that support in browsers will be a very low priority
> because the adoption rate will be negligible.

For XHTML2 in general or a single new element? (Potential) browser support
should not be a reason against the inclusion of a new element or attribute.
Look at HTML4 table features--most of them aren't well supported.

Christoph