[whatwg] <time>

[Andy Mabbett]

In message <20090309215532.GA3201 at stripey.com>, Smylers 
<Smylers at stripey.com> writes

>Tom Duhamel writes:
>
>> My opinion is that all the following dates are precise:
>> 2009
>> 2009-03
>> 2009-03-09
>>
>> The later is more precise, but the three are all precise in my
>> opinion.
>
>Being precise means having a small granularity.  Obviously that's
>subjective, but in many cases granularity of a year would be deemed
>quite large.

I take it you're not a geologist? ;-)

If I wish to compare my earnings, or the average daily rainfall, or 
somesuch, for 2007 and 2008, then the four-figure "yyyy" value is as 
precise as it is possible to be; anything with higher granularity would 
introduce bogus precision.

>> There are numerous reason to use dates which are not very precise, but are
>> still precise nevertheless. I'm going to release the new version of my
>> current project in <time datetime="2009-04">April</time> but I cannot tell
>> as of now the exact day of the release.
>
>Indeed, that's a reason to use an imprecise date in that paragraph of
>text.  But it isn't apparently why that date needs to be marked up as
>such; what consumers of the above HTML would do something useful with
>it?

I again refer readers to the use-cases I posted recently - including 
searching, sorting and visual display.

-- 
Andy Mabbett