EDFT in ISO

CSL Development
1

Apropos recent discussion.---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: “Denenberg, Ray” rden@loc.gov
Date: Jun 11, 2015 4:27 PM
Subject: EDFT in ISO
To: DATETIME@listserv.loc.gov
Cc:

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