On 30 Jul 2009, at 17:36, Sam Kuper wrote:
Suppose you wanted to mash up the Darwin correspondence data with a
SIMILE Timeline[1], it would help if the correspondence data was
(more) machine-readable. Now suppose you also wanted to add some diary
entries[1] to the same timeline, so that you could instantly visualise
when letters were written vs when diary entries were written. This
would be much easier if both the two websites from which you were
sourcing your data used a consistent, machine-readable date format.
[1]http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/
[2]http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?
itemID=F1925&viewtype=text&pageseq=1
I think Google News Timeline is worth mentioning here as an
application which already does this
http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
It shows events going back to the late Middle Ages. I'm not sure how
they've harvested the dates from wikipedia. Perhaps by using
microformatted dates?
So, yes, I think there is a strong case for using the <time> element
to standardise publication of historical dates, not just dates in the
modern period. That would include dates where only the year, or year
and month, or a range between two years is present.
Jim
Jim O'Donnell
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk
