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Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> >
> > <div id="year"><p>Years in the Christian calender, to which 2000 is
> > added</p></div>
>
> I see no reason why the exact same provision cannot be made in the case of
>
> <date>2002-08-06</date>
>
> In the schema, you can say:
>
> "A date formatted as specified in ISO-8601"
yup. but this value _is_ tagged, it's not just a string.
>
> BTW, I always used
>
> 2002-08-06
>
> On purpose
>
> *you* came up with "02-02-01", which, as well as your XML representation,
has
> well-known problems in the general case.
example chosen for effect.
>
> I also don't see any reduction in abiguity. You have explicitly put into
the
> instance data that is well-documented in ISO-8601. You've only moved the
> authority, and I personally prefer the "YYY-MM-DD" form because it leaves
the
> authority where it belongs.
>
> > If it didn't reduce ambiguity _some_ then there would hardly be a need
for
> > XML, or SGML for that matter.
>
> Can you justify this statement? Seems a leap to me.
well, with
<date>
<month>02</month>
<day>03</day>
<year>2004</year>
</date>
if you can understand english and what a date is, and what tags mean, then
you ought understand this date in a totally unambiguous fashion. Contrast:
<date>2004-02-03</date>
Now, I'd _assume_ that these dates are the same, but how can you be totally
sure? There is _some_ ambiguity, unless you read some _external_
documentation.
Besides the vast majority of Americans write:
<date>02-03-2004</date>
and so when you have different specs that start mixing the order of years,
months, days it _is_ ambiguous. If you write out the date as is often seen
in legal documents it is the equivalent of the marked up version:
This third day of February in the year of our Lord 2004.
(assuming we agree who "our Lord" is :-)
Jonathan
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