In message <20090309215532.ga3...@stripey.com>, Smylers
<smyl...@stripey.com> writes
Tom Duhamel writes:
My opinion is that all the following dates are precise:
2009
2009-03
2009-03-09
The later is more precise, but the three are all precise in my
opinion.
Being precise means having a small granularity. Obviously that's
subjective, but in many cases granularity of a year would be deemed
quite large.
I take it you're not a geologist? ;-)
If I wish to compare my earnings, or the average daily rainfall, or
somesuch, for 2007 and 2008, then the four-figure "yyyy" value is as
precise as it is possible to be; anything with higher granularity would
introduce bogus precision.
There are numerous reason to use dates which are not very precise, but are
still precise nevertheless. I'm going to release the new version of my
current project in <time datetime="2009-04">April</time> but I cannot tell
as of now the exact day of the release.
Indeed, that's a reason to use an imprecise date in that paragraph of
text. But it isn't apparently why that date needs to be marked up as
such; what consumers of the above HTML would do something useful with
it?
I again refer readers to the use-cases I posted recently - including
searching, sorting and visual display.
--
Andy Mabbett
