I am pleased to report that work has begun in earnest to incorporate EDTF into ISO 8601. ISO recently approved a work item for an "8601 Part 2". (I don't know if this really means "Version 2", or if there will actually be two parts.) And so a Working Group has been convened, and I have joined. Unfortunately I have had to miss the past two calls, when EDTF has been discussed, but from the minutes, it seems that much of it is being well-received. This is all very preliminary of course. I want to bring to your attention several changes that are being suggested. These suggestions are tentative as they have not been discussed yet within the group, just suggested. But I want feedback from this group, if anyone objects to any of these suggestions. (Personally, I think they're fine.) * '?' (question mark) currently means "uncertain", '~' (tilde) means "approximate, and '?~' means "uncertain as well as approximate". The suggestion is to replace the latter with a single character and the suggested character is '%' (percent). * 'u' means unspecified, and the suggestion is to change that to '!' (exclamation). * 'y' is used at the beginning of the date string to signify that the date is a year exceeding four digits. The suggestion is to change this to 'Y' (upper case). * 'unknown' and 'open' : the suggestion is to replace these with single characters, and the suggested characters are '*' and '&' (asterisk and ampersand). * Numeric values for seasons: Currently: * 21 = Spring * 22 = Summer * 23 = Autumn/Fall * 24 = Winter The suggestion is to rename these four, and expand the list: * 21 = Spring - Northern Hemisphere * 22 = Summer - Northern Hemisphere * 23 = Autumn/Fall - Northern Hemisphere * 24 = Winter - Northern Hemisphere * 25 = Spring - Southern Hemisphere * 26 = Summer - Southern Hemisphere * 27 = Autumn/Fall - Southern Hemisphere * 28 = Winter - Southern Hemisphere * 31-34 for Q1 - Q4 ( 4 periods of 3 months each) * 41-43 for Quadrimester (3 periods of 4 months each) * 51-52 for Semestral (2 periods of 6 months each) The next scheduled call is Tuesday, June 23, so if you have concerns about these suggestions, please post them before then. Ray