(See also related posting " 'x' notation - Discrete years vs. interval".)
Related to the consecutive date issue is the more general issue of multiple dates.
My question is: do we need the multiple dates feature.
The draft spec proposes curly brackets to enclose multiple dates thus {1667,1668,1670--1672} would mean "all of the years 1667, 1668, 1670, 1671, 1672". Wouldn't it be easier to simply declare the data element to be repeatable in the data dictionary, than to deal with this syntax?
On the other hand if you have a hundred or so dates to enter, and chunks of them are consecutive, it may be nice to have this sort of compact syntax available. So {1901,1903,1905--1940,1941,1943,1945--1958,196x,1971--1988} is probably easier than entering all 72 years individually.
Note that in this example I have chosen to represent the years 1960 through 1969 as 196x. That works only if we decide to use the x notation for multiple dates rather than an interval, which is still undecided. Alternatively I could have used 1960--1969, if we decide that 196x instead refers to a continuous interval, though 196x is obviously more compact and nicer.
Please share your thoughts on this.
--Ray
|