On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 09:34:12PM +0100, David Woolley wrote:
> 
> > "The feature is only useful if they use it." is a charge that could be
> 
> Mine was a two part argument:
> 
> - Those who need to use it won't;

On the contrary, some of them will.  I think most people currently don't even
consider using canonical date formats, and even if they did, the vast majority
would still decide that it would be too unreadable.

If a <date> element existed, they could make a smooth transition to accessible
dates, without sacrificing readability for people whose browsers don't support
pattern-matching against dates and converting them into other formats.  In fact,
I don't know of any such browsers; do you?

> - Those who don't need to use it (because they already use unambiguous
>   date formats) will.

Great!

But define "need."  If there exist no browsers that support date pattern-
matching, but a few that support the <date> element, do they "need" to use the
element if their dates are unambiguous and canonical?

Either way, it would be nice if they did.

I think <date> is at least as usable and general-purpose as <kbd>, <samp>, and
all the other elements nobody ever actually uses.


--
Daniel Brockman
daniel@brockman.nu