On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:34 AM, David Singer<[email protected]> wrote: > At 11:16 -0500 30/07/09, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote: >> >> > 1) Machine readability. >> >> This begs the question. > > raises the question. begging questions is assuming the answer in the > premise of the question.
I meant it in the sense you specify. It begs the question by giving machine readability as a reason for allowing it in <time>, when the question is posed was "why do you need machine readability"? >> Why do you need machine readability for the >> dates in the Darwin journals? More specifically, why do you need >> machine readability in a standardized fashion currently expected to be >> used primarily for adding dates to calendars? > > It allows you to build databases with timelines, that span documents on the > web from diverse sources. This seems like a decent use-case to consider. You want to search the web using temporal data as a search parameter in order to, for instance, create a timeline. >>> 2) Consistency across websites that mark up dates. >> >> What form of consistency? Date format consistency? This varies by >> use-case, region, and language. Machine-format consistency? You then >> have to answer why such consistency is important - what does it let >> you *do*? > > It would allow you to determine that *this* event reported in an arabic text > with a date referring to a caliphate was actually almost certainly *before* > this *other* event reported in a byzantine text with a date that is on the > indiction cycle. The experts in arabic and byzantine texts individually > might well have the skills to convert these dates to a uniform day-labelling > system, whereas the interested reader might have the skills in one or the > other, but maybe not both (or perhaps even, neither). All right, so another use-case: you want to easily compare ancient dates across the web, even if they're written in different and possibly unfamiliar dating systems. ~TJ
