[whatwg] <input type=number> for year input

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 18 Feb 2014, Jonathan Watt wrote:
>
> When implementing <input type=number> for Mozilla I decided to display 
> the value to the user using the grouping separator (generally the 
> thousands separator) of the users locale. So, for example, if the 
> input's value is 1234 and the user's locale is English, it is displayed 
> to the user as "1,234".
> 
> This is causing a problem for at least media wiki, because they use 
> <input type=number> for year input. For example:
> 
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IRIX&action=history
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/newbies
> 
> The question is, should I change Mozilla's implementation to stop 
> displaying the internal value using grouping separators, or is it wrong 
> to use <input type=number> for year input. I'm erring on the former, but 
> I'd like to solicit others' thoughts on this matter.
> 
> I should also note that I can still allow the implementation to accept 
> input from the user that contains grouping separators, even if when the 
> internal value is set/changed the visual result will be updated to a 
> string that does not contain grouping separators.

My recommendation would be to just use comma separation for numbers 
greater than 9999. It doesn't help that much for four-digit numbers, and 
years beyond four digits often _do_ have commas, e.g.:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_10,000_problem

I agree that it's a bit weird (though not particularly wrong) for 
four-digit years to have commas. type=number does seem appropriate for 
years, though.

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