Forum Moderators: open
I'm with rewboss all the way on this one. If the page we present to the world is intended to be read, understood and used by PEOPLE from all nationalities and levels of education/intelligence/age groups, then we have an obligation to make that page absolutely free from misunderstanding... and standards be damned!
If I design a site for a holiday resort and the booking form allows arrival and departure dates to be interpreted differently, think of how much sh*t will hit the fan when the customer thinks they are booking for 7th March and the resort makes the booking for 3rd July.... a lawyers smorgasboard!
Don't assume dates will be read the same way by everyone... I can assure you absolutely they will not.
ISO 8601 is not understood by Mr and Ms Average-Surfer.
ISO 8601 may be used in technical documents. Maybe the military use it as well. These are specialist fields and Mr and Ms Average-Surfer -- the people I am designing my sites for, for the most part do not understand ISO 8601.
As for the international issue...
If I write a page in English, I will write the date as 10th July 2002, and the time as 11.45am. The chances are that anyone who doesn't understand that format won't understand the rest of the page and won't be reading it.
If I write a page in German, I will write the date as 10. Juli 2002, and the time as 11:45 Uhr. Wahrscheinlich werden diejenigen, die dieses Format nicht verstehen, den Rest der Seite auch nicht verstehen und auch nicht lesen.
If I write a page in Russian, I will write the date as 10 iul' 2002, and the time as 11:45 ch. Yesli ne ponimayut... uh, well I think you get the point.
If you want my site to be accessible to everybody no matter what their native language, what must I do to achieve this? Following this line of logic, we must have no text at all on any of our websites.
You cannot force the issue. People will use what they are used to, and that's that.
Did you know that the USA adopted the metric system for its weights and measures as the only legal standard? But you won't find many people using it because their great-great-gandparents used (actually misused) the First Amendment to assert their right to use whichever standard they wanted, and they wanted the old system.
In Britain, bus and train timetables are written in 24-hour format. But you will usually find a little diagram somewhere explaining how the 24-hour format works, because few Brits use the 24-hour clock for anything except bus and train timetables.
Just because a standard exists doesn't mean it is always sensible to use it; certainly not without thinking through the consequences.
We try our best to stick to the W3C recommendations for markup because, in theory at least, it makes our sites faster, more likely to be cross-browser compatible and also (if the software giants play fair) forwards compatible. But markup isn't for Mr and Ms Average-Surfer, it's for Mr and Ms Web-Designer, Internet Explorer and friends.
That said many of my co-workers still preferred the format they had grown up with, even though it was undisputable that it was more likely to cause misunderstandings then YYYY-MM-DD. The arguments were often in line with "It reflects the natural way humans think." But when three people all (at the same time) claimed that their own different way of writing dates represented "the natural way humans think" it became quite obvious to everyone that there is no such way but merely what one is used to.
Therefore, when designing software I use the locale settings of the operating system when displaying (and accepting) dates, but when it comes to web-pages and printed documentation it will always be in YYYY-MM-DD. I motivate that with it being better to use a format that some people will have to stop and think a little about but no one will misunderstand then a format that some will get right immediately but others will misunderstand. It being an international standard is of course an extra plus.
What I found was that although most of them never had heard of ISO 8601 or YYYY-MM-DD formats no one ever misunderstood a date in YYYY-MM-DD format. Some had to stop and think a little, but they all understood it without any explanation from me.
There are so many other things that we could standardize. Here are some examples:
Weights and measures: The metric system is used in most countries in the world. It is also the official system in the only major country that doesn't regularly use it. There is therefore no reason to use inches, pounds, miles etc on the web. Goodbye 17" monitors, hello 43cm monitors.
Numerical notation: Decimal points and thousands separators vary wildly from country to country. In deference to the fact that the International System of weights and measures, used by scientists, was developed in France, we should use the French system: commas as decimal points, and periods to separate the thousands.
Mathematical notation: The divide-by symbol also varies from country to country. Since slashes are used to approximate vulgar fractions, we should adopt the colon, as used in many European countries.
Paper format: A constant source of problems is the issue of paper format, which also varies from country to country. In order to ensure that a document written in Europe will fit on an American standard letter (or vice versa), it must be reduced to about 92% original size. Since the German Industrial Norm (DIN) has proved so successful and been adopted by all European countries, this should be the format used. An interim transitional period should be granted to allow Americans to replace or reconfigure their printers and photocopiers.
Postal addresses: There are many anomolies here. For instance, the German Post insists that, on overseas letters, the country should be on the last line of the letter and the only line written in block capitals; the British Post Office, however, insists that the town or city name be written in block capitals and the post code to be the last item, even on mail coming from abroad. Postal addresses badly need to be standardized. (This will also help webmasters design forms for shipping information.) French is the official language of the International Postal Union, so country names should be written in French.
Clearly a date of 1/2/3 will work clearly and unambiguously only if you are absolutely sure the person reading it understands your conventions.
On the other hand, 2001-02-03 is only probably unambiguous and may cause some head-scratching before the reader twigs -- so it is not 100% clear either.
Both those "other hand" problems due to the (as yet) non-universal acceptance of ISO8601.
I suggest the answer (given we are in a transitional period) is to use ISO8601 and (if your site/audience) need it, a local format too:
2001-02-03 (3rd Mar) would cover a lot of the cases I use.
However, there is also a need for a strictly numerical date format in many web-applications.
One example would be applications where visitors might modify or enter date. Yes, it can be solved with three drop down lists: 1-31, January-December and years, but this type of interface tends to be a bit annoying when there are many dates to enter.
Another would be large lists of events, say financial transactions, where you are interested in the distance (time wise) between them. Although everyone would understand 11 March 2002 and 9 August 2002 most people will count on their fingers to find out how many months there are between them. A strictly numerical format is more appropriate in that case.
A third example is when other parts of the web-application are using a numerical format of one reason or another (maybe one of the two above). Then it can be a good idea to use the numerical format even where you otherwise might have used "11 June 2002" since consistency also is important.
Anyway, my point is not really the examples as such, but merely that sometimes a strict numerical date format might be desirable.
On a side note: Some years ago I developed a software for international mailing lists (snail mail that is) and got very frustrated trying to support all the different address formats, especially the UK one. As you pointed out, most of the time it is impossible to adhere to both the originating country’s address standard and the UK one at the same time.
Variable - Current Date and Time
<%=lastrevisedn%>
<%
'*** date now
lastrevised = now
lrtime = formatdatetime(lastrevised,vbshorttime)
edward = formatdatetime(lastrevised,vblongtime)
edward = left(edward,len(edward)-3)
arredward = split(edward,":")
edwardfoo = arredward(2)
lrdate = formatdatetime(lastrevised,vbshortdate)
arrdate = split(lrdate,"/")
if arrdate(0)<10 then arrdate(0) = "0" & arrdate(0)
if arrdate(1)<10 then arrdate(1) = "0" & arrdate(1)
lrdate = arrdate(2) & "-" & arrdate(0) & "-" & arrdate(1)
lastrevisedn = lrdate & " " & lrtime & ":" & edwardfoo & " " & "UTC"
%>
Variable - Last Revised Date
<%=lastrevisedt%>
<%
'*** date then
lastrevised = rstemp("lastrevised")
lrtime = formatdatetime(lastrevised,vbshorttime)
edward = formatdatetime(lastrevised,vblongtime)
edward = left(edward,len(edward)-3)
arredward = split(edward,":")
edwardfoo = arredward(2)
lrdate = formatdatetime(lastrevised,vbshortdate)
arrdate = split(lrdate,"/")
if arrdate(0)<10 then arrdate(0) = "0" & arrdate(0)
if arrdate(1)<10 then arrdate(1) = "0" & arrdate(1)
lrdate = arrDate(2) & "-" & arrdate(0) & "-" & arrdate(1)
lastrevisedt = lrdate & " " & lrtime & ":" & edwardfoo & " " & "UTC"
%>
You may want to change the naming structure, that's my programmer being funny. His response; "Do you have to have milliseconds?" My response; "Yes, I have to have milliseconds!"
The current date and time is...
2002-07-11 17:11:19 UTC
Your programmer may also be interested in:
[exit109.com...]
[delphi32.com...]
[cs.tut.fi...]
[pvv.org...]
[personal.ecu.edu...]
[phys.uu.nl...]
[cs.waikato.ac.nz...]
[merlyn.demon.co.uk...]
[cpearson.com...]
[whizkidtech.net...]
I think that is all of the ones with program code in them.
I got your mail. Haven't had time to deal with it. Give me a few days (at least).
<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S UTC%Z" -->
Produces this...
2002-07-03 19:03:05 UTC-0700
<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S UTC" -->
Produces this...
2002-07-03 19:03:05 UTC
BTW, Standard time zone is UTC-0800 hours here in Sunny Southern California. Due to daylight saving time adjustment of +1 hour, the current time zone offset is UTC-0700 hours.
UTC means Universal Time, Coordinated or Coordinated Universal Time.
P.S. If you need a double space between date and time, just add two non-breaking back spaces between these two (%d %H)
2002-07-03 19:03:05 UTC-0700 should be:
2002-07-03T19:03:05-07:00 or:
20020703190305-07
One example would be applications where visitors might modify or enter date. Yes, it can be solved with three drop down lists: 1-31, January-December and years, but this type of interface tends to be a bit annoying when there are many dates to enter
Another would be large lists of events, say financial transactions, where you are interested in the distance (time wise) between them. Although everyone would understand 11 March 2002 and 9 August 2002 most people will count on their fingers to find out how many months there are between them. A strictly numerical format is more appropriate in that case.
Also, in most everyday cases, people don't think in terms of "first month, second month, third month...", they think "January, February, March..." People booking their holidays will think "Leaving 14th July, coming back 2nd August". If they are then forced to start thinking 7/14 - 8/2 (because they have to enter numerical dates to book their flights), then they start counting on their fingers.
2002 VII. 03. (or without the 0).
Strange, we still use that term in the UK.
g1smd, it seems as if, rather than suggesting that we use the ISO standard for dates, you're banging people with a stick and saying "you MUST use this because it's the standard!" As others have pointed out, it may be a standard, but that doesn't mean we have to use it. CSS layout is now considered the "proper" way to lay out a page, but that might not work for all audiences.
Also, not everything the W3C publishes should be taken as gospel. They're not perfect and they do get it wrong sometimes, or rather get it half right but need to work on it some more.
I think NATO tried that format for a time. It was a compromise because the Brits and the French couldn't agree the language for the abbreviated 3-letter month names. It never caught on as a standard.
Zaccix:
....it may be a standard, but that doesn't mean we have to use it.....might not work for all audiences.
I think you've hit the key points here. There are undoubtable many websites whose users would benefit from the ISO standard date format -- almost anything with an international audience for example.
But there are many today which probably would not. It's good that g1smd has raised this issue -- it gives the concerned webmaster a chance to consider it, and maybe experiment with some changes.
If a few people report back that ISO dates triple their conversions, the whole thing may snowball.
And, even if it doesn't today, it seems reasonable to keep the issue under review -- if a whole generation is growing up using ISO 8601, then the proportion of sites whose users benefit from it will steadily increase. Starting, I'd guess, with the important international youth market.
"Please don't use GMT, that term went obsolete in 1971."
Strange, we still use that term in the UK.
Tapolyai:I think Russia uses Roman numerals for months; rather odd, seeing as the Cyrillic alphabet doesn't have either a V or an I.
2002 VII. 03. (or without the 0)
I think NATO tried that format for a time. It was a compromise because the Brits and the French couldn't agree the language for the abbreviated 3-letter month names. It never caught on as a standard.
But it didn't catch on in Britain and France, and this illustrates the problem: it's very difficult to force people to use a standard they are unfamiliar with.
For ISO8601 to be readily accepted by all would require that all countries in the world enact legislation to this end. Most countries simply won't bother. Many European countries will probably accept it grudgingly, but it will take several generations. Americans will most likely simply refuse, and will do what they did with metric weights and measures: invoke the First Amendment and claim it means they can express their dates in whatever form they choose.
Even if we could get all governments to co-operate, I estimate it would take another 40 years to implement.
Since this discussion has started, and especially since I have been more or less told that YYYY-MM-DD is practically taking over the world, I have kept my eyes peeled for any evidence. I have not seen a single incidence of this format being used anywhere at all, except for a few I have been specifically pointed to in this thread.
