[whatwg] Dates BCE

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Sam Kuper<sam.kuper at uclmail.net> wrote:
> 2009/7/30 Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Sam Kuper<sam.kuper at uclmail.net> wrote:
>> > Not for BCE; I'm not working on that period at the moment, but excepting
>> > that, here are a couple of good examples with ranges:
>> > http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-10762.html
>> > http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-295.html
>> > http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-6611f.html
>> > Now, either there should be markup available for ranges, or it should at
>> > least be possible to specify components of a date independently of each
>> > other, and to imply (at least for humans) a "range" spanning these
>> > different
>> > date elements as appropriate.
>>
>> Now, here's the million-dollar question: Why do you need <time> or
>> something like it for these dates?  You seem to have them marked up
>> quite fine as it is.
>
> 1) Machine readability.

This begs the question.  Why do you need machine readability for the
dates in the Darwin journals?  More specifically, why do you need
machine readability in a standardized fashion currently expected to be
used primarily for adding dates to calendars?

> 2) Consistency across websites that mark up dates.

What form of consistency?  Date format consistency?  This varies by
use-case, region, and language.  Machine-format consistency?  You then
have to answer why such consistency is important - what does it let
you *do*?

~TJ