- From: Christoph Päper <christoph.paeper@crissov.de>
- Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:03:31 +0100
Mikko Rantalainen: > How about specifying that the content of <time> element will be parsed > for the date only if 'datetime' attribute is empty. In addition, the > spec should explicitly say that if the content is time in any other > calendar system but Proleptic Gregorian calendar then the datetime > MUST > contain equivalent time in standard format (...). From an author's perspective the simplest thing would be a mutable | datetime| attribute: it contains either an ISO 8601 datetime (i.e. proleptic Gregorian, preferably including time spans and lesser precision than days, e.g. weeks) or an alphabetic identifier of the calendar system used in the text node. Only if the attribute contents is purely alphabetic and known user agents may try to parse the textual contents. Perhaps the default value, only used when the attribute is left out, could be (proleptic) Gregorian and hence also trigger parsing of the textual content. Authors are encouraged to supply the standard date nevertheless, because parsers for other calendars may be more error-prone or not even implemented. From a reader's perspective dates should never be autoconverted inline, by the way. They should be converted for purposes other than reading the text, though.
Received on Thursday, 19 March 2009 04:03:31 UTC