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Re: W3C Schema: Resistance is Futile, says Don Box

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: W3C Schema: Resistance is Futile, says Don Box
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 11:20:55 -0400
• In-reply-to: <2YNOL2UUTLH71V2YGA6342DA4YYTMJ.3d061205@MChamp>
• References: <4.2.0.58.20020611104226.021b48e8@p...>

At 11:06 AM 6/11/2002 -0400, Mike Champion wrote:
>Hmmmmm ... ya pays yer money

If you have to.

>  and ya takes yer choice:

Yep, though I think you're missing a lot of options in this list.

>You can:
>
>- Have some input-time code (or post-input cleanup code) that normalizes 
>values so that they can be effectively processed as strings, such as 
>converting natural language, locale-specific dates into ISO (or some 
>other) format that allows them to be sorted and compared as strings ...
>
>- Use a schema, schema-processor, and schema-aware sorting/comparison 
>tools such as XPath 2 or XQuery to process the XML as typed values rather 
>than strings ...
>
>- Live with the fact that 1.00 != 1, and 20020611 != June 11, 2002, ad 
>nauseum.
>
>For my money, normalizing the values can solve many of the problems that 
>strongly typed schema languages are supposed to solve, but often more 
>simply/cheaply/portably/etc.

Normalizing is a wonderful thing if you're entering information once and 
will always have the tools around if you need to change it.  It's a real 
straitjacket if you take XML's textual flexibility seriously and don't want 
to lock yourself into a particular set of tools.  W3C XML Schema, of 
course, combines the requirement for normalized lexical forms with an 
oddball set of types, which is worse.

><RagOnSimon> You don't like schemas, you don't like GUIs, you don't like 
>bloated applications ... how DO you handle these problems? </RagOnSimon>  :~)

I'm a text-editor kind of guy who writes SAX filters.  That solves a lot 
for me.  I'm actually working on a GUI as part of MOE, but it's pretty 
embryonic right now.  If I had more time, I'd try to solve more problems...

Simon St.Laurent
"Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue

• Follow-Ups:
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  • Re: W3C Schema: Resistance is Futile, says Don Box
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: W3C Schema: Resistance is Futile, says Don Box
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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