[tei-council] datatype issues (part 1)

[Syd Bauman]

> 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?

There are several profiles (i.e., subsets) of 8601 which are arguably
superior. (They have rules like don't permit basic, only extended,
formats where both are available; don't permit "24" in the hour
field, etc.)


> 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.

What makes you think one can't express fractions of a second in ISO
8601 durations? I am quite positive you can in the alternate format
(e.g., PT00:00:00,110 for 110 ms), and thus presumed you could in the
format with time-unit designators.

(BTW, 8601 permits fractions of other units, as well; so "half an
hour" could be PT00,5.)