On Sep 25, 2006, at 10:03 AM, Jeremy Boggs wrote:
i would be very interested in helping to explore a "history"
microformat. In my spare time, I've been collecting examples of
history timelines, after discussions a few months ago on this list
about the inability of using hCalendar to mark up before common era
dates, and other considerations for marking up historical dates and
spans of time.[1] I've collected examples of uses of BCE dates and
timelines in general, but I could easily expand the scope of my
inquiry.
Starting to collect these at history-examples on the wiki, and making
notes at history-brainstorming would be a useful start.
Like Tantek says, a history microformat might help address the issue
of past currency values, as well as help markup a host of other
historical information: both secondary sources (biographies,
timelines, articles, genealogy) and primary sources (census records,
newspapers, letters, diaries, probate records, etc...). I may be
biased about this (I'm a history PhD student. And, I understand that
we would need to collect real-world examples first before moving on.
I'd be happy to share what I've collected so far, and help out any way
I can, if the community thinks it is worthwhile.
Price exchanges are a complex subject, and we should be wary of either
over-simplifying the real world, or bringing too much of its own
complexity with us.
Some prices fluctuate minute by minute (think stock markets), some on a
slower basis. For most currencies, people are willing to consider
prices in that currency as usably stable, though obviously the date it
was offered is a useful secondary piece of information.
Comparing prices between countries and even more so between eras is far
more problematic, because of technological change affecting relative
prices. I don't think we want to get into GDP deflators and Purchasing
Power Parity if we can avoid having to. See this recent post for some
of the complexities:
http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009469.html
One thing that has come up several time here is a discussion of
date/price series - comparing prices over time. That seems like a
useful thing to consider in the light of composable date and price +
currency formats.
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