[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: ANN: XML Schema of measurement units

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: ANN: XML Schema of measurement units
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 09:23:58 -0400
• References: <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E430752B853@HQ5><3D63EEB4.D2A2D64F@m...> <00ab01c24990$c14ad3a0$fe193044@tbp1><3D64E1DB.A9797551@m...>

Roger,

[Roger L. Costello]
>
> Can you give me a scenario where it would be important to know that
> milliliter, ml, and ML are all equivalent?

Maybe you could give some of the scenarios you have in mind.  Right now it
looks like  a general pick list, which will be very useful, but who is the
intended user?  I suppose it boils down to "How knowledgeable will this user
by about units?", and whether the focus will be on the authoring side or the
consuming side.  If the focus is on consuming software that might receive
any of the variants in the list ("ml" vs. "mL"), then it would seem useful
to say that they are all related.   If the focus is on authoring with the
assumption that the author almost knows but just needs a little
encouragement to pick the "right" one, maybe not.

> I think that one way to
> achieve this would be to create a milliliter simpleType, which
> enumerates the different forms.  Then, the volume simpleType would be a
> union of the milliliter simpleType plus all the other values.

This sounds excellent and easy to do.  Also, it would involve almost no
extra effort in the creation of the schema.

>At the
> moment, however, I am happy just to have a simple list.  As for your
> second comment, I do locale-specific qualification to a limited extent.
> For example, gallon (US) versus gallon (UK).
>

Right, but those are actually different units (does the user in the
scenarios know this?), and I was thinking of different local names for the
same unit.  Maybe that is not really appropriate for a schema on standard
units, though!

Cheers,

Tom P

• References:
  • URIs and XML Vocabularies As Code Systems (WAS RE: A multi-step approach on defining object-oriented nature)
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • ANN: XML Schema of measurement units
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
  • Re: ANN: XML Schema of measurement units
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
  • Re: ANN: XML Schema of measurement units
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>

• Prev by Date: RE: A multi-step approach on defining object-orientednatureof DOM
• Next by Date: XML indexing/search engine
• Previous by thread: Re: ANN: XML Schema of measurement units
• Next by thread: RE: ANN: XML Schema of measurement units
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread