HTML Date Entry Type?

I've been doing web-database development in oracle for almost three
years now (yes, almost three years!) and I've finally decided to bring
up a big problem for me - the lack of a DATE field type in HTML.

Does anyone know if there is any discussion of this or suggestions for a
change?  The problem is major one for a number of reasons.

I can't use XML or SGML to specify a new doc type with this input field
since a) the companies I work for don't have the browsers and they want
to stay with HTML only since the managers understand it.  b) the oracle
back end applications server uses packages which process HTML but not
XML/SGML so I can get them to spit out pre-formatted date field in their
HTML forms. c) it is a real pain to get the data from a form formatted
corectly to do a data type conversion of the input from varchar to date
(if I declare the incoming input is a date, it must be exactly
formatted.....)

Hardcore oracle users will know that you can use OWA_UTIL.CHOOSE_DATE to
simplify this (it creates three select lists...), but it would be easier
to have a single entry field which automatically formats to a date type
(as in client server apps such as PowerBuilder, PowerJ, etc.).

Has this issue - adding a new input field type in the HTML specification
been discussed?  If not, can we bring it up?  I've been through the 4.0
specs and I don't see anything that solves this problem.

-Ed Robinson
info@earmarked.com

Received on Friday, 3 April 1998 17:56:47 UTC