[whatwg] Dates BCE

[Jim O'Donnell]

On 30 Jul 2009, at 17:36, Sam Kuper wrote:

> Suppose you wanted to mash up the Darwin correspondence data with a
> SIMILE Timeline[1], it would help if the correspondence data was
> (more) machine-readable. Now suppose you also wanted to add some diary
> entries[1] to the same timeline, so that you could instantly visualise
> when letters were written vs when diary entries were written. This
> would be much easier if both the two websites from which you were
> sourcing your data used a consistent, machine-readable date format.
>
> [1]http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/
> [2]http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset? 
> itemID=F1925&viewtype=text&pageseq=1


I think Google News Timeline is worth mentioning here as an  
application which already does this
http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
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?

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.

Jim

Jim O'Donnell
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk




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