`abbr` for machine-readable microformat dates explained (was: Markdown and the hCal microformat)

[Michael McCracken]

On Aug 3, 2006, at 12:40 PM, Milian Wolff wrote:


> Am Donnerstag, 03. August 2006 21:26 schrieb A. Pagaltzis:

>> the idea being that I used “now” as a human-readable shorthand

>> form for 2006-08-03T21:22:44+0200. (I’m not sure about the exact

>> format required for the title attribute.)

>

> So you want to be able to parse the generated html for further use?


Yes. See [the microformats wiki][1] for a bunch of sites that publish  
this microformat, and you can search the web's microformatted dates  
using [Technorati's microformat search tool][2]. Momentum is building  
for tools to aggregate and search microformatted data.


> Because else I don't get it why one should add such a date. I just  

> image a

> disabled user with a screenreader stumbling upon the <abbr> tag (or  

> wherever

> else you store the *extended* date) - would be quite a suprise in  

> my opinion

> but then I dont use hCal much.


It's been discussed on the microformat-discuss list that using <abbr>  
this way isn't less accessible in any practical sense. I can try to  
dig it up if you're interested, but the point is moot - that is the  
way the microformat is specified. I wasn't inventing anything new there.


> Who is interested in the time zone that was posted in except  

> databases?


Users using those databases are interested. Generating the right time  
zone from a user-friendly syntax for dates is a challenge of my idea,  
though.

-mike


[1]:http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar#Implementations
[2]:http://kitchen.technorati.com/search