RE: atoms, molecules

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 10:31 PM 4/17/01 +0100, Stuart Naylor wrote:
>I find it a little strange the idea of representing unicode translations of
>binary data types.

You're already putting your 'binary data' into Unicode with XML, so I don't 
quite see the objection.

>If a service or application is going to use a schema then it probaly has the
>logic to deal with the underlying data.

Not every service or application is going to need a schema, nor is it clear 
that schemas provide an appropriate level of granularity for all applications.

>I like things simple like myself and with something as fundemental as a
>precision number or integer do I not already have my schema embeded already
>with the decimal point.

Sorry, but not everyone sees precision numbers or integers as fundamental, 
and the problems get much larger with more complex types like dates and 
durations.

XML Schema Datatypes in its current forms solves certain problems.  I'd 
like to see more attention paid to the nature of those solutions and to the 
remaining problems.


Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books