[whatwg] Time and Date (was: Joe Clark's Criticisms of the WHATWG and HTML 5)

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Colin Lieberman wrote:
> Matthew Raymond wrote:
> >
> > I support the <time> element for the opposite reason, in fact. I don't 
> > want to see authors styling the date format. I'd rather see the date 
> > format localized or customized to a user preference. If the author 
> > wants it in a specific format, they can use CSS to style the element 
> > in such a way as to show its contents:
> > 
> > HTML:
> > | <time datetime="YYYY-MM-DD">(*)???MMMM;YY;D???(*)</time>
> > 
> > CSS (using css3-content):
> > | time { content: contents; }
> 
> I agree to a point. Time and date should be machine readable in markup, 
> but I don't know if UAs should *default* to user preference over-riding 
> the author's chosen format.
> 
> My argument here is cultural or sociological - If, in 10 years, kids 
> grew up only ever seeing dates presented in one format, they wouldn't 
> learn about how dates work elsewhere. This seems like a small thing, but 
> I think the flavor of dealing with varieties of date formats is just one 
> way that we get to participate in a really cool, big world full of lots 
> of different people.

I think it is highly unlikely that <time> would be so successful as to 
hide all other date formats from users. Would we only be so lucky!

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