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<br><div><div>On 30 Jul 2009, at 17:36, Sam Kuper wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Suppose you wanted to mash up the Darwin correspondence data with a</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">SIMILE Timeline[1], it would help if the correspondence data was</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">(more) machine-readable. Now suppose you also wanted to add some diary</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">entries[1] to the same timeline, so that you could instantly visualise</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">when letters were written vs when diary entries were written. This</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">would be much easier if both the two websites from which you were</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">sourcing your data used a consistent, machine-readable date format.</font></p> <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">[1]<a href="http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/">http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/</a></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">[2]<a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1925&viewtype=text&pageseq=1">http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1925&viewtype=text&pageseq=1</a></font></p> </blockquote></div><div><br></div>I think Google News Timeline is worth mentioning here as an application which already does this<div><a href="http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com">http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com</a>/</div><div>It shows events going back to the late Middle Ages. I'm not sure how they've harvested the dates from wikipedia. Perhaps by using microformatted dates?</div><div><br></div><div>So, yes, I think there is a strong case for using the <time> element to standardise publication of historical dates, not just dates in the modern period. That would include dates where only the year, or year and month, or a range between two years is present.</div><div><br></div><div>Jim</div><div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><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="http://eatyourgreens.org.uk">http://eatyourgreens.org.uk</a></div><div><br></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>