On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Misha Wolf wrote:
> The examples given suggest this standard does not handle times. In many
> fields, information older than an hour, or even than 15 minutes, is stale.
> Financial information and news in general are examples. Such items require
> a much more accurate scheme, such as one based on ISO 8601 - "Data elements
> and interchange formats - Information interchange - Representation of dates
> and times". Unless ANSI.X3.30-1985 handles time information in a suitable
> manner, I would suggest the treatment of this standard as a "best practice"
> or "default" is inappropriate.
Well I orginally had RFC822 style dates (with times and timezones) as the
default but the ANSI one seemed more popular with other meta2ers. I must
admit I'd prefer one with times in as well, and I'd also personally prefer
one with a freely redistributable definition (which counts out the ISO
standards). But we've also got to make sure that the default is one that
people will be able to generate correctly, and the ANSI does seem pretty
simple to generate. If having the ANSI badge is a problem, there's always
ISO.31-1:1992 which has a similar format to the ANSI.X3.30-1985 standard.
Those needing more precise dates can alwars use a qualifier to specify it
of course.
Ah standards, eh? One for every day of the week and then some to spare...
:-)
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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