- From: Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>
- Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:23:05 +0100
- To: Jim O'Donnell <jim@eatyourgreens.org.uk>
- CC: whatwg@lists.whatwg.org, public-html@w3.org
Jim O'Donnell 2009-03-16 21.42: > On 16 Mar 2009, at 20:10, Tom Duhamel wrote: >> - Calendar is specified in a new attribute ('calendar' or something >> similar) and the value of 'datetime' attibute is specified in the >> calendar specified by that new attribute > This seems overly complex to me. > > Can we follow existing practice from TEI ie. datetime may only be > Gregorian and no other calendar - calendar (if present) identifies the > calendar in the original text (analogous to the way the HTML lang > attribute indicates the language of the enclosed text). > > So, a date marked up in a TEI document as > <date calendar ="julian" value="1547-02-28">18th Feb. 1546</date> > transforms to the following HTML > <time calendar="julian" value="1547-02-28">18th Feb. 1546</date> (Guess you meant "datetime=" - not "value=" in HTML example.) > My reasoning here is that TEI is already in widespread use, authors > familiar with it will expect the same markup practices in HTML and one > of the largest uses for historical dates as <time> elements will be > transformation of existing TEI documents to HTML. > > It seems dangerous, to me, to adopt a whole new standard for historical > dates in HTML when there is an existing standard in wide use. > Essentially I'm asking that the spec for <time> mirror the existing spec > for <date> to make it compatible with historical texts: > http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P4/html/ref-DATE.html Specifically, the dangerous difference is that in TEI, the @calendar attribute is used for another purpose than what Tom suggests: it speaks about the content rather than about the attribute. Regarding @calendar: I don't know if there is a @title attribute in TEI as well. But assuming there isn't, then even as the HTML 5 draft looks *right now*, it is very possible to convert TEI <date> to HTML5 <time> - @calendar isn't needed for that: <time title="julian" datetime="1547-02-28">18th Feb. 1546</date> There should not be any need to place - as you suggested in another message [1] - a localized form of the ISO format inside @title, because, after all, the purpose of @datetime is to make it available - possibly in a localized format. The nice thing about @title is that title speaks about the content - always. Hence it is logical to place "julian" there. If needed, it can be expanded by the Julian date in a more detailed format - (e.g if the text says "Friday", you can add the full Julian date in the tooltip). Basically, I agree with you: ISO dates only. However, in HTML we also need to consider that the purpose of <time> is wider than that of <date> in TEI. Therefore it is necessary to specify: a. purpose of @title: calendar info and/or a date on a historical calendar; b. presentation: when the text is a historical one, the reader must know when it gets a historica date and when it gets an ISO date. (I can certainly live with more calendar formats ... But I suppose we won't get agreement on that. ISO is adopted as standard format many places - e.g in SQL. And HTML 5 specify SQL in HTML ...) [1] http://www.w3.org/mid/8769D30B-A5C7-4167-9D64-926327F774BE@eatyourgreens.org.uk -- leif halvard silli
Received on Monday, 16 March 2009 23:23:47 UTC