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[Jonathan Robie responding to Uche Ogbuji]
>I gather that a concrete example that illustrates your point is not
>something you can construct without some effort, which is why you are
>pushing back rather than providing one.
I see it is really simple terms:
<Example>
<Weight>123.456</Weight>
</Example>
Q. What is the value of the element Weight?
A. It is the *string* "123.456".
Q. Is it not actually the floating point number 123.456?
A. Nope. I might interpret it that way. It depends on how I am processing the
document. I make the decision in my processing - it is not up to XML to
tell me how
to interpret the text.
Q. Is it a good idea to bind the concept of "floating point number" tightly
into the processing
of this XML document? Would this not be wonderfully convenient?
A. No, because interpreting it as a floating point number is an
*interpretation* of the text, not
a fundamental part of the text. My process will do that interpretation,
thank you very
much. Besides, the more you tightly bind data types to chunks of your XML
the more
tightly you are binding XML to a process. The whole point of XML is that is
separates
content from process so that your content can outlive your processes.
Simplistically,
Sean
http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com
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