[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: PSVI formalization
Simon, can we clarify something? > > Who is talking about adding more complex types than elements and attributes? > ... > ... XML 1.0 types use markup to > identify structures in content. For example there may be information of > type "quantity" that gets marked up as a "quantity" element. The > definition of such things is notably called an "element type > definition". In talking about "more complex types" there are two different issues that might get confused. 1) binary datatypes 2) structures composed of elements and attributes I agree that all this business about different types of binary datatypes does not have much to do with XML. But on the other hand, XML types composed of elements and attributes are perfectly good XML, for example: (this is written in the XQuery formal semantics language which is similar to the RELAXNG non-XML syntax) type person.name.type = element person.name { (element family{text} | element given{text} | element prefix{text} | element suffix{text})* } type person.type { type person.name+, type address* } element doctor{ person.type, element license{text}, ... } element patient{ person.type, element hospital.id{text}, diagnosis* } and there are situations where I might want to select all "persons" for processing even though they have different containing elements e.g. <xsl:template select="person.type"> ... </xsl:template> > > From my perspective, you're crossing a line there. While integers > aren't particularly harmful in and of themselves, that's the leading > point of a much much larger wedge. As that wedge moves deeper (see for > example, XQuery/XPath) what was once a quantity is now an integer, > perhaps constrained with min and max values, perhaps given another name > to identify it as a particular type of integer. I do agree that an inordinate focus on binary datatypes is not something that XML ought concern itself with. On the other hand, I also think that there are excellent reasons to work with "native XML" types i.e. element and attribute based structures (a.k.a. "structured datatypes") I also can't say that I would bet the farm on the "PSVI" and its details ... it might be a bit more complicated than it needs to be, on the other hand I haven't spent much time trying to understand the nitty gritty details of how it is supposed to work. That is to say, I think "types" in general are useful, aside from the specific details of how XSDL and the PSVI are specified. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. On the other hand, let's be sure to use clean bathwater :-) Jonathan
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