At 19:26 -0500 13/03/09, Robert J Burns wrote:
The chief accomplishments of ISO 8601 is the ability to represent dates in a uniform manner and in defining the Gregorian calendar from 1582 to 9999 in an unambiguous way. Beyond those dates it leaves things imprecise and ambiguous.
You keep saying this, but I have yet to hear what is imprecise or ambiguous. Could you be more clear?
Apart from the topics we're actually disputing? :-) The issue of year 0000 opens a can of worms. Negative numbers open a can of worms.
What can of worms? In what way is labelling the day before 1 jan 0001 as 31 dec 0000 unclear?
1) HTML is often hand-coded and so it places an undue burden on authors to convert non-Gregorian calendar dates to Gregorian calendars dates
so it's better to place that burden on the many readers rather than the one writer? I don't follow you.
3) ISO 8601 says nothing about the interpretation of non-positive years and so the meaning within ISO 8601 is left ambiguous without further normative criteria
It says it uses consecutive integers as year labels, allows a minus sign, and, in case you are in any doubt, has an example of year 0000. What is ambiguous?
1) doesn't even reference ISO 8601,
I agree that would be better.
2) allows 0000 without attaching sufficient meaning to it
?
and does not allow any further dates before 0000,
yes, the reason for this prohibition is unclear, as they are well-defined.
3) does not clearly define the era,
8601 does, or do you mean something else?
4) and does not provide sufficient document conformance norms for the contents of the 'time' element.
again, details? -- David Singer Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.
