[whatwg] Please consider adding "timeref" attribute to <del> and <ins> elements

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2010, Tantek Ã~Gelik wrote:
>
> Summary: add a new timeref attribute (of type idref) to <del> and
> <ins> elements that can be used to reference the id of a local to
> document <time> element which is then used as the datetime value of
> when the deletion or insertion occurred.
> 
> Advantages:
> 1. encourage more visible data (dates in visible content inside a
> <time> element rather than in invisible datetime attribute).
> 2. Better DRY (don't repeat yourself) by enabling sharing of a common
> <time> element for multiple del/ins edits that occurred at the same
> date/time.

It's not clear that this is especially compelling, especially given that 
so few user agents use datetime="" at all in the first place. Making it 
more complicated likely wouldn't help with that.

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