[whatwg] <output> and onforminput

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
>>
>> Come now Jim, I've given you at least half a dozen use cases by now.
>
> Could you point me to them, as I've still not found them!

I don't have the time to go through the archives looking at my replies to
your e-mails if you don'¦ have the time to read them, sorry. Look in the
archives for any e-mail where you asked for a use case. My reply to that
e-mail will contain a use case.


>> Here's an ASCII art example of a form that would use datetime:
>>
>>   +-- Add Event --------------------------------+
>>   |                                             |
>>   |  Event name: [___________________________]  |
>>   |  Start time: [ Wednesday at 3pm          ]  |
>>   |  End time:   [ Wednesday at 3:45pm       ]  |
>>   |                                             |
>>   |                               (( Submit ))  |
>>   +---------------------------------------------+
>
> Right, still struggling to see this (the UTC basis is the problem, not
> the idea of a datetime) - remember on all legacy clients the user will
> be needing to enter it in UTC

As I have explained several times, this is not the case. The server can
support whatever non-WF2 formats it wants to support, including timezone
specifiers, educated guesses as to the user's timezone, or any other
mechanism that the servers use today.


> so it needs to be an international environment where the users are
> entering globally relevant times, I've simply not found these.

All event calendars for multinational companies or organisations, for
example the telecon calendar at the W3C, use globally relevant times,
since they have to coordinate the movements of people in different
timezones.


> (it doesn't even work with calendars, since times like "wednesday's at
> 3pm" are complicated by summertime changes.

DST changes are already handled by the host environment.


> Drop the UTC requirement, and I'd be completely happy with understanding
> datetime, but I just don't get it at all with this requirement, which is
> why I'm still asking for the usecase!

I really donæt understand what you think the "UTC requirement" is. Do you
mean drop the timezone specifier altogether? Or drop the requirement that
the timezone specifier be UTC?

If the former, then the time will be meaningless unless the server knows
the user's timezone. If the latter, then the data is trivially convertible
to the format that uses UTC, so why not simplify the life of the WF2-only
server author and convert the time to a predictable timezone all the time?

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