Re: Element for Dates/Times

David Woolley wrote:
> I can't imagine The Register using such a feature if it existed.

I doubt the Register will use XHTML 2.0 anytime soon. But when the time
comes for newspaper sites to convert to XHTML 2.0, I think they would at
least use <date>...</date> (without the time attribute).

> My guess is the only uptake for such a feature would be from people who
> were aware enough of the issue to code dates in an unambiguous way,
> e.g. the ISO format, in the first place.

The sort of developer who would uptake XHTML 2.0 is probably the sort of
developer who would uptake <date>.

"The feature is only useful if they use it." is a charge that could be
levelled against <abbr> and other tags. They'll never use it if it ain't
there.

> Microsoft Word attempts to recognize dates, even when
> only partially entered (for auto-completion) so the technology to
> do this unhinted certainly exists.

One could include heuristics to recognize many possible date formats in a
visual browser, but that seems pretty impractical to me.