My point about context, yes. BUT (all caps), what does your spec look like now? Ugly is what.
Geomol
:) Date and time is some of the hardest datatypes to implement.
Rebolek
I think the REN data format should be self-explaining. XX:YY isn't.
Gregg
Now we know why JSON left out date-time. :-)
If we make seconds optional, the onus is on the user to make things unambiguous if they want. If we say two segments are hh:mm, that's what they are, even if we sometimes forget. :-\
Geomol
World goes a bit further. Examples:
w> 12:00 + 1 ; Here 12:00 is HH:MM == 12:00:01 w> 12:00.1 ; Here it's MM:SS.1 == 0:12:00.100000
So if you just have two numbers separated by a colon, it is minutes and seconds, if you have fraction also.
Gregg
REBOL does that as well, which I think Ren should NOT do.
Geomol
Ah yes, Rebol does it too.
Geomol
Maybe you need Loose Ren and Strict Ren?
Gregg
Nope. Need to keep it simple.
Geomol
agree
Gregg
That doesn't mean people can't write tolerant loaders though.
So if we start with hh:mm:ss all being required, and everyone writes loaders that allow just hh:mm, changing the spec to allow that won't invalidate any existing Ren data.
Geomol
It's almost mission impossible. Easiest then is to skip date and time, so users need to use strings. But this is probably not, what we see as a useful format coming from Rebol.
Good point, Gregg.
Gregg
If we leave out date-time, we're not much better than JSON.
It's just "mission compromise".
But if REBOL, Red, and World all allow just hh:mm, we're incompatible
No perfect answers.
Rebolek
There won't be 100% compatibility anyway. No construction syntax, etc.