- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 22:48:01 +0000 (UTC)
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Sander wrote: > > Thinking about datetime input values (as they currently exist) while > writing this email, I have realized that the zero-point for step is > currently undefined for all datetime-related input types (well, the spec > says it's "0", but I call that undefined). For time it's reasonable > enough to put this as "00:00:00", but date is harder. (0? 1900? 1981? > the current year? (And if so, the current day? Current time?)) This will > need to be specified in any case. (Alternatively it might be easier to > specify a default "min" value.) Good point. What value do people prefer? Midnight on Thursday January 1st 1970? (the zero point for time_t) I've used that for now. It's arbitrary, but better than 0000-01-01, since then you might have to take into account the start of the gregorian calendar and all that nonsense. >> The problem is that with your solution, UAs have to be able to work out >> how to render the UI of thinks like "d,h,m,15w". I have no idea how that >> would look, let alone how a UA would handle it or how to specify it in >> the spec. > > Assuming that the order of the fields specified can be ignored by the > useragent and just treated as largest first (a reasonable enough assumption > I think) Is it? People were asking to be able to format their fields. > plus assuming that you meant w for week of the year, and m for minute > (various languages use different conventions, so here I went for the > easiest one) :), I think it would look roughly the same as <input > type="local-datetime" step="9072000">, except without a year identifier. But the concept of "week" is meaningless without a year. So is day, for that matter. > Are there any other people with feelings about this? Am I the only one > who believes that a lot of situations will be encountered where the six > datetime types currently available will prove to be too limited, and > that I'd really prefer one type="datetime" capable of handling it all? I've been looking around the Web, and while I agree there are edge cases that aren't dealt with, I don't think they are common enough to require the extra complexity that you are proposing. >> For a dropdown to pick a month, there is nothing wrong with <select> >> with twelve child <option> elements. > > Indeed. And yet, if it's all the same to you, I'd much rather write <input > type="datetime" format="m"> then the 14 lines for the select; particularly > as I can just see the client for that site coming back a few months later > with a request to increase the specificity to week. 52 lines of "jan 01 - > 07" don't make me happy, where <input type="datetime" format="w"> does. :) <input type="week"> is even easier. :-) -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 30 June 2004 15:48:01 UTC