Re: [xml-dev] maps

["Jeff Rafter" <jeffrafter@defined.net>]

>>I can create a type with a regular expression constraining its lexical
appearance, but there's no value space, so I can't compare, for instance,
75°15'00" N with 75.2500° N.<<

I remember that at CR the need for expanding value space was brought up.
Back then in my mind it was for dealing with simpler single units (like the
sorting of data based on enumeration values, for instance). It seems like
Regular fragmentations is the answer-- or at least in some ways-- you could
join "patterned" types that have lexical information using unions but still
cannot order the sub-pieces. Maybe this is a good thing to bring up for XML
Schema 1.1.

>>Once I create those smaller pieces, I can write
local logic which handles the particular semantics I need, and I can even
share that logic through the magic of open source.<<

Based on what you say, it would be interesting if each of the pieces could
contain an "order" attribute that described how they should be ordered. But
with the unit problem you still come down to the fact that it may be ordered
differently when the units are compared.

>>Once I've started doing that, it's not very difficult to look back at WXS
Part 2 as a misguided effort by programmers and database vendors to give
the world the types they use and no others.  Dates, times, and numbers are
all amenable to processing like the kind I've described above for lat/long,
and there's no need to bind everyone to an identical set of vaguely
primitive types.<<

I think that there are root types somewhere in there... I don't know how you
would express it without a notion for numeric values though. This sounds
like a double edged complaint-- "They didn't give me enough" "They gave me
too much". If they had given all of the types possible it would have just
been more fuel for the fire.

Maybe my response can be boiled down to this-- it would be good to see a way
to control value-space and lexical-space at the same time. I think this
would provide us with much richer types-- I am just unsure what it would
look like.

Best Regards,
Jeff Rafter
Defined Systems
http://www.defined.net
XML Development and Developer Web Hosting