Re: [VCARDDAV] Format of various date fields

[Mark Paterson <mark.paterson at oracle.com>]

Agreed. It would also make sense I think to update the text concerning valid date time values to be the same as iCal. There are cases where mobile devices will reject perfectly valid date time stamps. Being more restrictive as iCal is would help interoperability as well.

Mark

Darryl Champagne wrote:

Hi,

One recurring issue with mobile device implementations is trying to keep the
processing simple when converting from the vCard format into the native data
format (and back).  Things like "BDAY;VALUE=text:circa 1800", and in fact,
any variations at all (such as 1996-08-11T12:34:56Z vs. 19960811T123456Z)
make this more difficult.

For mobile devices (and simplicity of implementation in general), it would
help if a single format were adopted (at least at the SHOULD level, to allow
for users hand editing fields), rather than leaving things wide-open.  Note
that I don't especially care what format is adopted, just that as few as
possible formats are allowed.

Note that there are a number of ways possible to allow for the equivalent
information to be conveyed:

For example:
1) Unknown values could be explicitly referenced with unique values, such as
"x" (or 0, or whatever).  Therefore a birthday with an unknown year could be
represented by "xxxx-06-16"

2) Ranges of values could be explicitly allowed - "Circa 1800" is roughly
equivalent to "1800-01-01 +- 0100-01-01" or "1800-xx-xx +- 0050-xx-xx" (the
year 1800 plus or minus 50 years) or "1750-xx-xx - 1850-xx-xx".  

Again - I do not care which format is selected, but I am trying to point out
that exactly specified formats would be much easier to deal with in the
mobile world than nearly freeform text, and also would work better for
comparison purposes (e.g. if during a Sync I am comparing 1800+-50 years
from one side, and 1820 from the other, I can reasonable choose the 1820
value, but I am unlikely to know how to deal with "circa" or "~" or "just
before", but any user interface that allows circa can easily pick a
reasonable range).

Thanks,
dgc
--
Darryl G. Champagne
Technology Evangelist
Funambol
OMA-DS Vice Chair
dgc at funambol.com          http://www.funambol.com

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Mark Paterson | Product Manager, UC & Mobile Services | 514.905.8649
Oracle Server Technologies - Collaboration
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