xml-dev - RE: Community help on W3C XML Schemas

[Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@Allegis.com>]

> From: Rick JELLIFFE [mailto:ricko@geotempo.com]
> [...]
> I would like to renew my call for people to make concrete 
> suggestions on
> improving the text of W3C XML Schemas. 
> 
> I am particularly interested in knowing the points at which people who
> get lost or stymied or frustrated.  Are there terms that are 
> not defined
> sufficiently? 

Well, one point that I noticed just recently is ambiguity in the spec
regarding time zones for date/time datatypes. Time zone indicators are
identified as "optional", but the spec offers no explicit guidance for
implementations on how to deal with date/time datatypes that omit a time
zone indicator. Should they be treated as being in the local time zone of
the receiving application? Should they be treated as UTC? Would an
application that rejects date/time datatypes that don't specify time zone be
violating the schema spec? Would it be violating the schema spec if it
treated just values as UTC?

I posted a question to this list regarding this just a few days ago, but got
no response. I think the specs should address this ambiguity.