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<br><div><div>On 11 Mar 2009, at 08:54, Robert J Burns wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 20.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Authoring tools can be used to convert from other formats to Gregorian.</font></p> </blockquote><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">And in that regard, it should be very relevant to have a calendar attribute.</font></p> </blockquote><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Or reuse the RDFa datatype attribute with new calendar system keywords.</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> </blockquote></div><div><br></div>I'm not sure that would work, or rather that you would need the complexity of RDFa for something as simple as a change of calendar. My example of a Julian date in 1732<div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><time calendar="Julian" datetime="1732-02-22">Feb. 11 1731</time>,</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">(from <a href="http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P4/html/ref-DATE.html">http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P4/html/ref-DATE.html</a>)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">would then be, I think, in RDFa</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><time datatype="GregorianDate" content="1732-02-22">Feb. 11 1731</time></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">since datatype describes the format of the content attribute, which is always a proleptic Gregorian date. So you'd lose the semantic information that the marked-up date is in the Julian calendar.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I'm proposing that datetime accept ISO8601 dates as per the existing W3C datetime profile. ISO8601 dates may only use the Gregorian calendar. In addition, it would be useful, but not essential, in describing the semantics of historical dates to have an attribute, as per TEI, identifying the calendar in use in the text itself. That shouldn't add any extra load to datetime parsers - they only need to be able to understand Gregorian ISO8601 dates.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Expanding the datetime or RDFa content attributes to contain non-Gregorian dates would be an unnecessary headache and, frankly, more trouble than it's worth.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Regards</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Jim</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div></div><div><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div>Jim O'Donnell</div><div><a href="mailto:jim@eatyourgreens.org.uk">jim@eatyourgreens.org.uk</a></div><div><a href="http://eatyourgreens.org.uk">http://eatyourgreens.org.uk</a></div><div><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/eatyourgreens">http://flickr.com/photos/eatyourgreens</a></div><div><a href="http://twitter.com/pekingspring">http://twitter.com/pekingspring</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>