Re: [whatwg] <time>

Hi Tom,

On Mar 16, 2009, at 8:52 PM, Tom Duhamel wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>  
> wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> I think those examples and suggestions all look good. I have one  
> correction and one other example.
>
> First the correction
>
>
> <time calendar="Mayan" datetime="12-11-10-09-08">A date</time> is  
> printed on the statue
> Printed on the page: "A date is printed on the statue"
> Tool tip shows: "12-11-10-09-08 (Mayan Long Count)"
> In this example, my user agent does not understand the date, and  
> simply display in a non converted way
>
>
> Here I think the tool tip has to be:
>
> Tool tip shows: "12-11-10-09-08 (Mayan)"
>
> directly providing the keyword without a localized natural language  
> form (as in your example). That is for unsupported calendars the UA  
> would simply have to present the raw attribute values in these  
> cases. For supported calendars the dates can be formatted and things  
> like months, for example, can be presented in a localized manner  
> (January for English instead of 01, Janvier for French, etc.).
>
> I can only agree with you. As the user agent does not understand  
> calendar "Mayan" it obviously cannot do anything better than just  
> reused the value provided. Let's add that on our proposal.
>
> I am not an expert in calendars, just someone who happens to have  
> some interest in Native American history, thus my *basic* knowledge  
> of the Mayan Long Count calendar. Assuming that I always saw the  
> name exactly as "Mayan Long Count calendar" I guess the correct  
> format would be:
> <time calendar="Mayan Long Count" datetime="12-12-12-12-12">
> which would show correctly "12-12-12-12-12 (Mayan Long Count)" in  
> the tooltip.

I don't think we need to tailor the keywords to be full natural  
English language expressions. So “calendar="Mayan"” would be  
sufficient and could be displayed to the user in an info panel or tool  
tip as long as it is treated as an opaque keyword. UAs with support  
for the keyword "Mayan" (or, for another example "mlc" for Mayan long  
count) would then have fully localized dictionaries to display the  
dates and the calendar qualifier.

> Of course, this was only one possible way a user agent could display  
> the data, I didn't propose that all user agents should display the  
> data the way I did.

Understood. That's how I took your examples. As I said this could be  
through a sidebar, an inspector panel or any other method in the  
chrome of the UA.

>
> Another worthwhile example (one you suggest, but don't provide  
> specifically) would be to include something like
>
> This occurred on <time calendar="Gregorian" datetime="1882-03-14" / 
> >  on Ellis Island.
>
> where supporting UAs actually include the localized, formatted date  
> according to the user defaults.
>
> This occurred on March 14, 1882 on Ellis Island.
>
> A tool tip could still show shows: March 14, 1882 (Gregorian).
>
> Since Gregorian is the default calendar, and 99% of all dates on the  
> web will be Gregorian, I don't expect that browsers will explicitly  
> show "Gregorian", but rather only show what calendar is in use when  
> the calendar in use is not Gregorian.

Well, in this example I agree "(Gregorian)" would be redundant.  
However, the omission shouldn't be based on whether Gregorian is the  
most prominent on the web. Rather the calendar qualifier should be  
omitted when it matches the user's default calendar settings. For  
example if the user defaults for my system are set to display Hebrew  
dates, then the UA should display a Gregorian qualifier whenever it's  
presenting a Gregorian date (or any non-Hebrew date), but omit the  
qualifier when presenting a Hebrew date. For a system set to  
Gregorian, the Gregorian qualifier should be omitted and when  
displaying a Gregorian date, but a UA should be sure to include the  
"Hebrew" qualifier for a Hebrew calendar date (for specialized UAs,  
the UA might also provide control over whether to always, sometimes or  
never convert calendar dates to the preferred calendar).

As a reminder, the wiki has a starter page which might be a good place  
to add a proposal.[1]


Take care,
Rob

[1]: <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/DateTime>