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User:Idevlin/add era attribute to time element

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Change Proposal

Summary

Enhance the HTML5

This is an enhancement to the following proposal:

Rationale

There is currenly no way to specify historical dates before the Common Era with the <time> element, and even the proposal linked to above doesn't allow this. The addition of an 'era' attribute would accomodate this.

Details

  1. Add an 'era' attribute to the HTML5 <time> element
  2. This attribute can have one of two values: 'ce' (common era) or 'bce' (before common era)
  3. If the 'era' attribute is not present, the default value is 'ce'

Impact

Positive Effects

  • The addition of this attribute would allow those (e.g. historians and archaeologists) who wish to specify historic dates in the past. The abilility to do so would increase the take-up of the <time> element, especially in academic circles where dates before the Common Era are commonplace, as it would remove the issue of "not supporting dates before the Common Era" (which has been identified in various places ([1]) and ([2])
  • This will not lead to a "year zero" issue as the proposed use of the (The Dionysian "Common Era" [3]), which doesn't have a "year 0" eliminates that possibility
  • The existing specification of the <time> element and the proposal mentioned above will not need to be changed, as the value of an 'era' attribute simply indicates which era the date refers to

Negative Effects

  • None identified

Conformance Classes Changes

As defined by the editor.

Risks

None.

References

All references are inline