- From: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:34:29 -0700
At 11:16 -0500 30/07/09, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote: > > 1) Machine readability. > >This begs the question. raises the question. begging questions is assuming the answer in the premise of the question. >Why do you need machine readability for the >dates in the Darwin journals? More specifically, why do you need >machine readability in a standardized fashion currently expected to be >used primarily for adding dates to calendars? It allows you to build databases with timelines, that span documents on the web from diverse sources. > >> 2) Consistency across websites that mark up dates. > >What form of consistency? Date format consistency? This varies by >use-case, region, and language. Machine-format consistency? You then >have to answer why such consistency is important - what does it let >you *do*? It would allow you to determine that *this* event reported in an arabic text with a date referring to a caliphate was actually almost certainly *before* this *other* event reported in a byzantine text with a date that is on the indiction cycle. The experts in arabic and byzantine texts individually might well have the skills to convert these dates to a uniform day-labelling system, whereas the interested reader might have the skills in one or the other, but maybe not both (or perhaps even, neither). -- David Singer Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.
Received on Thursday, 30 July 2009 09:34:29 UTC