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On Friday 04 March 2005 06:19 am, David Carlisle wrote:
> > imo that's an ugly character, the "¬" symbol.
>
> That symbol would be immediately understoood by countless mathematicians
> all over the world whereas unexpected english words in the middle of an
> expression would make formulae harder to understand even if English is
> your spoken language, and perhaps unintelligible if it is not.
> I suppose you don't like an upside down A for "for all" or a backwards E
> for "there exists" either?
David,
I've never heard of those...
it's not so much about like or dislike... but rather doing markup in such
a way that the xml can easily handle what we do most... and for many
that is transporting business data around the place.
The key types of business data are:
- String values
- numeric values (ie integers, numbers)
- currency values
- boolean values
- date/time values
They're present in field types in all the databases that we use.
So I've been using the following representation to denote field types:
& = String values
# = numeric values (ie integers, numbers)
$/£/¥/€ = currency values
? = boolean values
@ = date values
The markup roughly becomes:
<tag>
element[field_type]=[data_value]
</tag>
This is probably not perfectly adapted for use in mathematics. But it is
fairly good for transmitting business data, which is usually built up from
data of the above types.
The other important question or point you mention is readability. In my
world, the people reading the markup are the business analysts, IT support
staff or the business owners. They aren't highly trained and need something
very simple.
So these are the particular adaptations/improvements that I have made
to suit the particular requirements as I see. But the purpose is firmly for
business use... so forgive me if I'm somewhat blind to other uses...
Best Regards
David
--
Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.
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