- From: Philip TAYLOR [PC87S-O/XP] <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:35:19 +0000
- To: Lachlan Hunt <lhunt07@postoffice.csu.edu.au>
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
Lachlan Hunt : > For example, someone writing a a schedule for an event would probably > mark up some kind of calendar listing the dates, times and description > of each activity at the event. Then visitors to the site (who might be > from a different country/culture) who recognise dates differently will > still be able to understand and be able to attend at the correct time. One problem is that what is unambiguous is not necessarily what is also easily decoded. For example, those in continental Europe and many Asian countries think and write their months as numbers -- 07/03/2003 for example. Overlooking (for now) the ambiguity of this v. American 07/03/2003 where month and day are transposed, for the rest of us there is the non-trivial problem of mentally verbalising the month in its canonical (spelt) form. However, if one were to propose that months be spelled out, then there is no guarantee that "Kwiecie\'n" would be meaningful to non-Polish speakers, for example, particularly as "Kwiecie\'n" means "April" in Polish whilst "Kv\v eten" means "May" in Czech ... (presumably Spring occurs earlier in Poland than in the Czech Republic). Thus we have a situation in which neither numeric nor spelled-out months are inherently useful to those from other cultures (one might say the same about the days of the week). I offer no solutions to this problem, and simply seek to reflect on what appears to be quite a difficult problem ... Philip Taylor
Received on Thursday, 30 October 2003 10:38:50 UTC