[whatwg] simple numbers

[Fabien Meghazi]

> While I think there is certainly something to be said for the proposal, I
> don't think there is enough evidence that authors really want or need
> this. I think we should focus on having CSS support this first.

Maybe we could think about a general purpose element which allows
formating for regionalisation of values.

Example for datetimes. Consider an application where you have the
timezone of your users, you have to
pan the date accordingly to the timezone of the user, and you have to
do this server side. Besides, if it's a
public site and you don't have timezones of your users, you will only
display a datetime that will match the server's
system date. If we could have a tag that takes a UTC/GMT and format it
accordingly to client system dates and his system/browser
preference ( dd/mm/yyyy, yy/mm/dd, mm/dd/yyyy, ....) we would get rid
of a problem all web developpers came across.

I think that it would be a good thing to have a data regionalisation
tag that would allow to display dates, datetimes, numbers, currencies,
...

<tag type="datetime">Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:57:14 GMT</tag>

format could be overridden

<tag type="datetime" format="yyyy/mm/dd HH:MM">Tue, 11 Dec 2007
10:57:14 GMT</tag>

<tag type="number">251234565455.26</tag>

or even a styles like declaration ?

<tag format="type: currency; decimals: 2">251234565455.2654656</tag> $


Anyway, I think it's worth discussing about this because it would be a
good think for usability of browsers. If this is implemented, we will
see a cool extension for Firefox 7.0 that will allows to convert
foreign currencies on the fly on websites.

-- 
Fabien Meghazi

Website: http://www.amigrave.com
Email: agr at amigrave.com
IM: amigrave at gmail.com