Re: Time zones in base data schema

I had an action item to reply to the timezone comment 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-p3p-public-comments/2000Jan/0009.html

I've sent the reply that you find enclosed below (didn't cc otherwise
further traffic would bounce on this mailing list as well...), which 
is conformant with the related discussion we had at the call.

-M


: 
: Dear Chris, thanks for your feedback on the P3P specification.
: 
: > 1. You specify only "text" as the type for the date.timezone field,
: > whereas this could be specified more precisely (like country code is).
: This is not the intent of the specification, and I'm sorry if you were
: mislead to assume there's no type constraint. After the date. table
: there is the precisation
: > All the fields in the date. type must be in the same format as those
: > in the most informative profile of the time standard ISO8601.
: (btw, because of your feedback I've changed "are" from the previous 
: version of the spec into "must", to make this clearer).
: So, in essence it's a matter of taste whether to introduce a new type
: (like for Country), or using a more general type and specify a 
: constraint on it. The current choice reflects the fact that eight 
: types in date. now are compactly referenced to ISO8601, while making 
: the type explicit would mean you've to create eight subtypes
: corresponding to ISO8601. Anyway, no semantic difference.
: 
: > 2. Lots of sites request the user's timezone, yet you don't have that
: > represented as part of your user. schema, other than perhaps
: > accidentally as a field in the birthday element.
: The timezone information can be inferred from user.home and/or
: user.business (from various fields, either city, or stateprov, or 
: postalcode etc). In general, we have tried to keep the base data set
: to a minimum, avoiding fields that are not of common use (after all,
: new data schemas can be created too). However, if you feel that the 
: ability to *directly* request a timezone can be of significant impact
: for many of today's sites, we'd appreciate some examples and use cases that
: could justify the introduction of a new timezone field.
: 
: Again, thanks for your precious feedback, and feel free to reply with 
: further questions and clarifications, until every doubt/problem you
: have is completely solved.
: 
: All the best,
: -Massimo
: 
: 
: /---------------------------------------------------------------\
: | Massimo Marchiori                    Room NE43-350            |
: | The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)  545 Technology Square    |
: | MIT Laboratory for Computer Science  Cambridge, MA 02139, USA |
: | WWW: http://w3.org/People/Massimo    Phone: +1 (617) 253 2442 |
: | Email: massimo@w3.org                Fax:   +1 (617) 258 5999 | 
: \---------------------------------------------------------------/
:

Received on Thursday, 24 February 2000 13:02:13 UTC