- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:50:48 -0500
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:34 AM, David Singer<singer at apple.com> wrote: > 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. I meant it in the sense you specify. It begs the question by giving machine readability as a reason for allowing it in <time>, when the question is posed was "why do you need machine readability"? >> 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. This seems like a decent use-case to consider. You want to search the web using temporal data as a search parameter in order to, for instance, create a timeline. >>> ?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). All right, so another use-case: you want to easily compare ancient dates across the web, even if they're written in different and possibly unfamiliar dating systems. ~TJ
Received on Thursday, 30 July 2009 09:50:48 UTC