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Hi Ray,


I see you've updated the LC EDTF page, but Annex A still seems to have an error in A.4.4.  Example 4 says "'2004-02-01/2005-02' is a time interval beginning sometime on February 1, 2004 and ending sometime in February 2005. Note that the start endpoint precision (year) is different than the end endpoint (month) and therefore the precision of the time interval at large is undefined."


But the start endpoint precision is day, not year, isn't it?


John Hostage




From: Discussion of the Developing Date/Time Standards <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Denenberg, Ray <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2018 11:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: future work
 

Hi John �

 

Thanks for the comments about EDTF.  I�ll try to answer some of your questions.

 

As far as changes between the current draft and the published standard, it is highly unlikely that there will be any functional or syntactic changes.  There could be minor presentational changes and of course, obvious errors will be corrected (if caught).

 

However, it is important to note that there were major changes from the DIS to the FDIS (resulting from comments to the DIS).  There are limits to what I am allowed to share at this point, however I am taking the liberty of attaching the Annex which is the EDTF profile.  I think you�ll find that it is dramatically improved. It is not quite as �pretty� as the LC version, but that�s because of ISO format and style rules that we had to adhere to.  I had no such constraints composing the LC version.

 

As far as future work, that�s out of my hands, and Ron is the one to address that. Whatever happens, I hope to see that at least the EDTF part of 8601 remains stable into the distant future and that any changes or enhancements are backwards compatible.

 

Yes, I wrote the LC EDTF page and I would be happy to entertain suggestions for improvement, as long as they are simple and don�t suggest technical changes.

 

On the subject of openness, access, and participation � I do guarantee that the EDTF specification will always be available from LC at no cost.  In general though,  I no longer have any influence on how ISO operates.  I leave that in Ron�s hands.  Your story about Australia�s attempt to participate is somewhat familiar to me. The US also is not a member body of TC 154 (for some political reason I don�t understand).  My participation in this endeavor came about backdoor � through ISO TC 46 � my participation began as liaison from TC 46 to TC 154 and it was a difficult administrative process because there was no relationship between the US to TC 154.  But it was TC 46, not TC 154,  that initially had interest in EDTF (long story).  I was quite active in TC 46, many years ago, but most of my standards development activity has been either National or ad hoc, for example EDTF,  which began as a community effort led by LC.  Another such effort (25+ years ago) was Z39.50 which was a combination national (ANSI) and international (community) effort, also spearheaded by LC.  I bring Z39.50 up for this reason:  Originally an ANSI standard, it became so popular, worldwide, that ISO wanted to make it an international (i.e. ISO) standard, and our position was, yes, we can do that, but we insisted that it remain free, and ISO agreed.  It was published by TC 46 (I  think, 1998, around 20 years ago) as ISO 23950 .  So, that�s one way to influence the process: develop a community standard that�s so popular that ISO will agree to keep it free. EDTF isn�t quite there (yet) but as I noted it will always be available from LC.  On �openness� in general, I leave that to Ron to pursue.

 

On your specific question �are you still open for WG members, or from participants on this listserve, to debate "whether null, or some specific character, should be used for 'unknown' in intervals�, unfortunately, no, it is too late in the process, and I concede that the process is less than optimal.   �� would be open to functional and syntactic revisions for the next ISO version ��.   I envision that the next ISO version (beyond 2019) would be the result of another community effort  leading to formalization in ISO, similar to the effort that led to the current EDTF. (It might be LC leading that effort, or it might not.)  So in that sense I suppose the answer is yes.

 

I hope this helps clear up some of these questions, and thanks for your interest.

 

Ray

 

 

From: Discussion of the Developing Date/Time Standards <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of John Bentley
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2018 10:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DATETIME] future work

 

Hi Ron,

 

I think you�ve missed the meaning of my question(s) again. But I�m grateful for the (quick) response. It might be best to wait for Ray to weigh in.

 

(Yeah, MS Outlook is also not very with regard to proper indents).

 

Cheers,

John Bentley

 

From: Discussion of the Developing Date/Time Standards <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Ronald Tse
Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2018 14:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: future work

 

Hi John

 

(I blame Apple Mail for not creating proper indents for listserv�)

 

Most of the issues you mentioned relate to ISO/DIS 8601-{1,2}. The new FDIS documents (ISO/FDIS 8601-{1,2}) don�t have these issues � Ray has updated LOC�s EDTF to reflect all changes. LOC�s EDTF and the EDTF-sourced-syntax in ISO/FDIS 8601-2 are identical. That�s what I meant by no material changes.

 

As for the future of EDTF, it purely depends on LOC and Ray�s team (with the community) on how things progress. I believe most experts at ISO/TC 154/WG 5 would want to keep the EDTF contributions synchronized with EDTF itself, but it will hard to deprecate past practice since the ISO 8601 series is widely applied.

 

Ron