Dates in XML

[Ron Bourret]

Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> ...
> I was looking at the XML-Data proposal just today and thinking 'why don't
> we use the primitives it defines, just as they are, without the rest of
> XML-data?'. This encourages me to offer the question to a wider audience. I
> am seriously missing a specification for  primitives - what do other people
> think about borrowing those from XML-data?

Absolutely.  For XSchema 1.1, I vote for a dt:dt attribute on the PCData 
element.

The XML-Data spec shows the following ways to specify data types:

Attribute:  <size dt:dt="int">8</size>
Subelement: <size><dt:int>8</dt:int></size>
Schema:     <elementType id="size"><datatype dt="int"/></elementType>

I believe we should only adopt the first of these for now.

While there are no technical problems with the second, it seems counter to the 
spirit of XML: We are now most closely labeling the value 8 as an int, rather 
than as a size, which is what it really is.

The third is just plain confusing because the datatype subelement is not part of 
the content model.  For example, what does the following XML-Data declaration 
mean?  The sequence is an integer?  I can imagine datatype elements as a 
substitute for content models, but not in addition to them.  Anything I'm 
missing here?

<elementType id="size">
   <datatype dt="int">
   <group groupOrder="SEQ">
      <element type="#shoe"/>
      <element type="#shirt"/>
   </group>
</elementType>

-- Ron Bourret

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