[whatwg] Please consider allowing <del datetime> and <ins datetime> attribute to accept only a date

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Tue Aug 24 15:59:00 PDT 2010


On Wed, 28 Jul 2010, Tantek Ã~Gelik wrote:
>
> Currently the datetime attribute requires both a date and a time.
>
> On the other hand, the time element's datetime attribute allows just a 
> date.
>
> Allowing just a date [is] easier for hand-authoring [...]. Authors can 
> more easily add ins/del elements with explicit datetime attributes if 
> they are permitted to specify only the date (they might not know or care 
> about the precise time), e.g. in blog posts that are updated by the 
> author.
>
> [Allowing just a date] avoids artificial precision. Forcing an explicit 
> date and time forces authors to enter artificial precision (e.g. 
> YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00Z instead of YYYY-MM-DD). Allowing just dates permits 
> authors to convey that a del/ins occurred on a certain day, and that the 
> precise time is unknown or irrelevant.
>
> this happens to me often when I have blog-like or other essay content 
> that I update by hand. Since I typically do updates to any particular 
> content about once a day, day-level granularity is sufficient. Picking 
> an arbitrary time seems like being forced to provide "fake" metadata 
> which I don't want to do.

Fixed.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
 


More information about the whatwg mailing list