Hi Jose: From my research on the subject for the NWDA Best Practices, it
appears that the only difference between basic and extended is how readable
they are by the human eye. We use basic format for normalized dates. It's
not a question of which is "better," but what suits the circumstance. Since
we would always put an eye-readable version inside the tags, and the
normalized version is only for machines, the basic format works for us.

Best, Jodi


On 3/27/06 7:27 AM, "José Guilherme Ribeiro" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm beginning to use EAD in Brazil, and I have a doubt on the @normal
> attribute of <unitdate> and <date>. EAD's manual recommends to use ISO
> 8601, that mentions two date formats: basic format, without punctuation
> (YYYYMMDD), and extended format, with hyphens (YYYY-MM-DD). At EAD's
> documentation, basic format is used at EAD Tag Library, but RLG's EAD
> Best Practices uses extended format. My doubt is wich format is better
> to use? Is there a standard, a rule or maybe a common understanding
> among EAD users that can guide this choice?
> Thanks a lot,
> José Guilherme 
> Brazil

-- 
Jodi Allison-Bunnell
Consortium Administrator
Northwest Digital Archives
Oregon State University
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