There was a suggestion that the tokens 'unknown' and 'open' not be used (to denote "unknown" and "open" for an interval end).
I agreed that
2008-08-08/open
could just as easily be:
2008-08-08/
However I don't have a good solution for a replacement for unknown. 'u' or '?' are not good choices.
The original suggestion did not really offer a reason why 'unknown' (or 'open', for that matter) should not be used. Unless someone can suggest something better I plan to keep 'unknown' as is.
--Ray
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of the Developing Date/Time Standards
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ray Denenberg, Library
> of Congress
> Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 11:57 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [DATETIME] features 321 and 322
>
> Looking again at this:
>
> From: Bruce D'Arcus
> > 2004-01-01/
> >
> > E.g. an interval with an unspecified closing date.
> >
> > Perhaps, depending on how the other discussion goes, we could also
> > allow something like:
> >
> > 2004-01-01/?
>
> The use cases are
>
> (a) the end of an interval is "open".
> Not "unspecified", not "unknown", but "open" as in "till the end of
> time"
>
> (b) the end of an interval is "unknown"
>
> (c) the beginning of an interval is "unknown".
>
> (There is no use case for the beginning to be "open". However that case
> is currently represented in the BNF, why, I don't remember, but I don't
> see that it can hurt.)
>
> I think we can generalize "unknown" to "unspecified". But I want to
> be clear that by "unspecified" we don't mean "open", we mean something
> close to "unknown"
>
> Anyway, So
>
> 2004-01-01/
>
> Could mean the interval "2004-01-01 till the end of time"
>
> Representing "unknown" is trickier. I don't think we want to use 'u',
> as in
>
> 2004-01-01/u
>
> because 'u' is used as a digit replacement and using it in this manner
> would be inconsistent.
>
>
> Using '?' would not have that problem, but '?' is otherwise attached to
> a date and means "uncertain about that date", where what we want to say
> here is "I don't know", and that would be inconsistent with other use
> of '?'. "I don't know" isn't said anywhere else.
>
>
> So, I think there is a workable solution to "the end of time" but I'm
> not sure about unknown/unspecified.
>
>
> Suggestions?
>
> --Ray
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