[whatwg] Issues relating to the syntax of dates and times

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 26 Nov 2008, Pentasis wrote:
> 
> Like I said, I completely understand the issues here. It just seems a 
> bit strange to me to choose one specific calendar and promote that one 
> to "exact".

Well it's the calendar in use by a large part of the world. It's not just 
any random calendar. :-)


> thereby not only limiting the use of the time-element in regard to *any* 
> time/date but even within its own calendrical base (1582 as you 
> correctly point out, but also to any leap-stuff that came after it).

Indeed, at some future point we'll have to add more (contemporary) 
calendar systems.


> in the end it is up to the author to use this element and I strongly 
> suspect it will be misused and abused because of it's illogical 
> limitations (this is no critisism, just an observation of the element 
> itself)

If it is misused, we will be able to use that information to design the 
next version to address the cases that authors in fact need. So in a way, 
that's all part of the natural evolution of the language. Indeed, <time> 
itself was originally added because <abbr> was being abused in a similar 
way (though almost exclusively for modern ISO8601 dates).

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