Time element

Research, data, use cases, issues, and enhancements related to the HTML5 time element.

year only

The time element should accept just a year.

ISO8601 syntax

YYYY

use case research

http://microformats.org/wiki/birthday-examples#year_only

Opinions / discusion:

• +1 Faruk (per Bug 7145 - Valid date strings should accept ambiguous inputs, like "2009" or "2007-01") One example is the very common archive view found on most blogs, which contain distinct links or headers for each year, each month per year, and often each date within a chosen or highlighted month. Currently, the <time> element only allows for datetime values as precise as a specific day, e.g. YYYY-MM-DD.
• -1 Hixie - "Without clear use cases, I don't intend to change the spec here." (ibid)
• +1 Tantek (per HTML5 Super Friends Technical Details: time element)
• +1 Andy Mabbett (Per use cases in VCARDDAV & EDTF - see external links)
• +1 Philip Jägenstedt - for marking up release dates on e.g. MusicBrainz where the date is given as YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD.
• ...

year month only

The time element should accept just a year and a month.

ISO8601 syntax

YYYY-MM

Opinions / discusion:

• +1 Faruk (per Bug 7145 - Valid date strings should accept ambiguous inputs, like "2009" or "2007-01") One example is the very common archive view found on most blogs, which contain distinct links or headers for each year, each month per year, and often each date within a chosen or highlighted month. Currently, the <time> element only allows for datetime values as precise as a specific day, e.g. YYYY-MM-DD.
• -1 Hixie - "Without clear use cases, I don't intend to change the spec here." (ibid)
• +1 Tantek I think the blog archives use case (where blogs often link to their archives by a specific month and year) is sufficient to justify adding this capability to the time element. Content hosting sites like Flickr also list archives by specific year/month, e.g. see http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/archives/
• +1 Andy Mabbett (Per use cases in VCARDDAV & EDTF - see external links)
  • Portable contacts allows this using a "0000" year value.
• +1 Philip Jägenstedt - for marking up release dates on e.g. MusicBrainz where the date is given as YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD.
• ...

month day only

The time element should accept just a month and a day.

ISO8601 syntax

--MM-DD

use case research

http://microformats.org/wiki/birthday-examples#month_and_day_only

Opinions / discusion:

• +1 Tantek (per HTML5 Super Friends Technical Details: time element)
• +1 "radiz" implied support for --MM-DD with the use case question: "How to use <time> with a date in astrology?" in the article http://html5doctor.com/your-questions-answered-6/
• +1 Andy Mabbett (Per use cases discussed in VCARDDAV & EDTF, e.g. birthdays, wedding anniversaries - see external links)

Calendar

The time element should accept a calendar scale (default is GREGORIAN) per the emergent vCard 4 specification, to facilitate the mark-up of non-Gregorian (e.g. Julian) dates.

Opinions / discussion:

• +1 Andy Mabbett (Per use cases in VCARDDAV & EDTF - see external links)
• ...

Fuzzy dates

The time element should accept fuzzy (uncertain, approximate) dates and eras.

Opinions / discussion:

• +1 Andy Mabbett (Per use cases in "Extended Date Time Format" proposals - see external links)
• ...

External links

• Extended Date Time Format efforts based at the USA's Library of Congress (Covers unspecific dates; date periods and non-Gregorian dates)
  • EDTF proposals (use-cases)
• Dates and coordinates in HTML5 - blog post by Andy Mabbett
  • Feb 2009 whatwg mailing list discussion of the above
• vCard Format Specification draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-11 (latest draft as at July 2010)
  • Section 4.3, date & time
  • Section 5.7, CALSCALE (specifies Gregorian or other (e.g. Julian) calendar)
    • VCARDDAV discussion of CALSCALE
• ISO 8601 (Wikipedia article)