[tei-council] datatype issues (part 1)

[James Cummings]

Syd Bauman wrote:
> LB> Yes, it defeats the point of the exercise. Think dates. You can
> LB> say <date>wibble</date> if you like, but once you say <date
> LB> value="xxxx">wibble</date> your value MUST conform to what the
> LB> relevant standard says it should be.
> 
> Yes indeed, which is possibly a bit of a problem for some TEI
> users, as they may well be interested in calendars other than the
> Gregorian, which is all that ISO 8601 purports to represent.
> (However, lots of people think it's OK to use it for proleptic
> Gregorian, too.)

Has anyone come up with a standard which represents any possible time, 
duration, periods, in all known calendars? Or is there a time/date 
standard that is in any way better ISO 8601?

One of the other differences I notice with ISO8601 and your patterns 
is that tei.duration current copes with things at a smaller 
granularity than 1 second and ISO 8601 doesn't.

-James