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5/15/2002 8:30:34 AM, Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@rpbourret.com> wrote:
>
>Agreed, although I'm not convinced that means we should throw out types
>altogether.
Nobody screamed when XPath added such universally understood types
as string, number, and boolean. Few would object to adding other
universally understood types such as date, and expanding "number"
into integer and floating point. People started screaming when
W3C Schema created date, time, dateTime, duration ... and
number got expanded into int, long, short, float, double
and all the rest that Amy Lewis so brilliantly skewered yesterday.
It's unfortunate that the debate has been cast in terms of
"characters" vs "types." It should be about "which types are so
universal that they can be supported deep in XML without undermining
the reasons for its success" and "how can type information be passed
around in a way that is useful for type-aware applications and
unobtrusive to character-only applications."
The quasi-official W3C answers to these questions, i.e.,
"all 30-something primitive and derived types" and
"shut up and drink your Kool-Aid" are just
not very popular on this list for some reason :~)
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