Re: A Call for Dialogue on XML Schema Part 1 and 2

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Don Park wrote:
> 
> Are we happy with XML Schema spec as it is?  

Asking the question is already an answer ;=) ...

> If not, can we salvage parts of it (i.e. part 2)? 

I see part 1 as too constraining and part 2 as lacking of abstraction.

Part 1 has given the priority to allowing FSM implementation over the
ability to describe commonly used patterns that are far from being
unanimously perceived as bad practice.

Part 2 doesn't allow to create new primary types nor to decouple the
canonical and value spaces. Consequences of this are the inability to
suport multiple date or numeric formats. I don't understand why this
hasn't already blown up, but when French developers will discover that
you can't handle alternative decimal separators or localized date
formats, I expect strong reactions and this is probably not specific to
France.

> I hate to see excellent proposals like 
> RELAX, TREX, and Schematron ignored for business reasons.

So do I.

I guess, though that W3C XML Schema is useful as it is now for a whole
range of applications (namely, e-business interchange formats) and needs
to be published ASAP.

I would have no problem with this and as Henry Thompson said recently,
this would allow to get real life experiences beneficial for everyone,
but please, let's recognize that the current W3C XML Schema is not
generic enough to be imposed to other specs such as XPath, XSLT, XML
Query or even XForms (can we imagine to have no support for alternate
date or decimal formats in a GUI interface ?) and leave all the
alternatives open.

Eric
 
> Best,
> 
> Don Park
> Docuverse

-- 
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org              http://ducotede.com
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