Re: Proposed Quality Tip -- Time in URIs (was URI Usability)

Quoting Rajasekaran Deepak <deepakr@students.iiit.net>:

> 
> * Brian Kelly <b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk> 2004-05-01
> > The current proposed tip seeks to provide examples which I don't think are
> > scalable and universal.  For example /2004/w12/6/ is clearly English
> > language specific.  Also dates and periods don't always start from 1 Jan.
> > For example in (UK) Universities week 10 may be in Decemeber, as the start
> > of the academic year begins in September of October.
> 
> Using ISO 8601 in URIs is only as international as ISO 8601 itself. ISO 8601
> specifies '2004-W12-6', which is, unfortunately, Latin-specific.
> 
> Any format which uses 0-9 is not universal because many other scripts use
> different digits. Examples:
>     Devanagari: U+0966 to U+096F
>     Telugu:     U+0C66 to U+0C6F
>     Tamil:      U+0BE6 to U+0BEF
> 
> The tip could be named "ISO 8601 in URIs", but that would be un-interesting
> and too specific. As of now, ISO 8601 is the only international standard on
> time, therefore, "Dated URIs" is a reasonable name.

I now understand where you're coming from.  As far as I understand it you're 
saying that ISO 8601 is the main standard for dates, therefore it should be used 
for date information in URIs.

However there are many instances for which ISO 8601 is not applicable.  The 
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) has done a lot of work in this areas, in 
addressing, for example, periods, historical time (period of the 100 years war), 
national and cultural differences (start of the 2nd World War), archeological 
time, etc.

The tip doesn't address such issues (understandably, as it's complex).  However 
the tip is misleading  because it doesn't acknowledge such issues.  I would 
agree that a title "ISO 8601 in URIs" would to some extend clarify the scope of 
the text.

BTW "ISO has a brain-dead policy&#8212;it does not give free access to its standards." 
is quite clearly inappropriate language.

Regards

Brian

> -- 
> Rajasekaran Deepak <http://students.iiit.net/~deepakr/>
> 
> 


-- 
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
BATH
BA2 7AY

Received on Monday, 3 May 2004 15:23:58 UTC