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cmsmcq@acm.org (C. M. Sperberg-McQueen) writes:
>I'm astonished to see document people disowning the idea of
>datatyping, as if better datatyping (and the failure of #PCDATA
>to provide the constraints we wanted, for things like numbers
>or dates or other simple datatypes) had not been one of the
>most frequently mentioned desiderata in discussions of markup
>among professional DTD designers, in the years 1986-1998.
>Datatyping is in XML Schema NOT because the database people
>crammed it down our throats, but because both the data people
>and the document people in the WG (who included, at various times,
>Paul Grosso, Murray Maloney, Eve Maler, Murata Makoto, and
>myself) wanted it. If the database and programming language
>people had wanted NOT to have simple typing, we would have
>had some serious disagreements.
Perhaps the "document people" are simply disappointed with what they
got?
I have no objection to datatypes as labels painted on information - that
seems like a natural part of "marking up", and is useful in all kinds of
contexts. On the other hand, the "enriched Infoset" philosophy, the
gHorribleKludge syndrome, and the sort-of-OOP type model of W3C XML
Schema indeed feel like someone crammed something down our throats.
Perhaps worst of all, I haven't seen anyone with the energy to compete
against WXS datatypes and do the job right. Murata-san, James Clark,
and the rest of the RELAX NG crew have done excellent work on the
structures side, but the datatype side malingers.
Time, energy, ideas. Some day someone will find enough of all three to
break ground on this difficult problem once again.
--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org
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