OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

 


 

   Re: Why XML data typing is hard

[ Lists Home | Date Index | Thread Index ]
  • From: "Michael Kay" <M.H.Kay@eng.icl.co.uk>
  • To: <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
  • Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 14:06:16 -0000

>Then your example proposed range of values is inappropriate because "4,50"
>is a valid float from an I18N point of view.


"4,50" is a localized rendition of a float value. But in XML we should
encourage a rendition-independent encoding of information. (One reason for
having data types is that the default rendition can be determined from the
data type and the locale.) The encoding we choose for floats does not need
to be constrained by human conventions. Any of the notations used in
languages such as C, Java, and SQL would do nicely: and fortunately they are
all very similar.

In fact, I don't think defining data types in XML is harder than in any
other language. In many ways it's easier, because we don't have to worry
about defining operations, only valid states (and perhaps equivalence
rules).

In principle I'm quite happy with data types being defined as an optional
module above XML. My only concerns would be (a) that the XML family of
standards is developing a rather large collection of optional modules which
don't always work well together (as witness Namespaces and XSL), and (b)
that a bolted-on standard might be constrained not to extend the current DTD
syntax.

Mike Kay


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)





 

News | XML in Industry | Calendar | XML Registry
Marketplace | Resources | MyXML.org | Sponsors | Privacy Statement

Copyright 2001 XML.org. This site is hosted by OASIS