RE: AW: ISO 8601 anyone?? And more on Parties.

[g1smd@freeuk.com (Ian Galpin)]

On 2001-Apr-19 John McClure <hypergrove@olympus.net> wrote in <ebXML-core>:


[2001-Apr-20]



> Again, I think that both encodings -- a presentation encoding and
> an 8601 encoding -- are necessary. What's the problem with
>
> <instant value='2001-01-01'>New Year's Day</instant>


On receipt the recipient may wish the presentation in a different language,
or just the day of the week, or some other variation that is different to
whatever was sent, so they would ignore the presentation encoding, and use
only the value data to derive what they require. Seems like a waste to send
something that might not get used.



> <instant value='2001-10-03T14:00'>03 Oct 01 2PM</instant>


Why take something unambiguous and print it in an ambiguous way? It seems
more sensible to keep to an umambiguous format end-to-end. Also, how would
you guard against the 'real' and presentation values becoming different? as
in...

<Delivery.Date>
  <instant value='2001-10-03T14:00'>22 May 01 8PM</instant>
</Delivery.Date>

If something happens to the data - a corruption, or perhaps malicious or
fraudulent editing of some part, then you may see the presentation value on
screen and agree to it, without checking the underlying 'real' value means
the same. If the presentation value is 'free format', then no computer could
ever do this checking for you. If the presentation value has to be in a
fixed format, then all you are doing is transmitting the same information in
two formats... a redundancy, which wastes bandwidth. If you are transmitting
data, then transmit it once, in one agreed format, not in several different
representations, that may become separated or different in meaning.



> <instant value='2001-10-03'>Oct. 3, 2001</instant>

>> Let's use just one format, end-to-end, in the whole process.
>> Avoids confusion, needs less processing.


I am against repeating data in other formats. Use just one, and one that is
globally unambiguous.



Cheers,

Ian.


<g1smd@freeuk.com>


[2001-04-20]

.end