Why XML data typing is hard

[Henry S. Thompson]

"Liam R. E. Quin" <liamquin at interlog.com> writes:

> Henry S. Thompson writes:
> > if we add sensitivity to language to our lexical typing, I might write
> >
> > <balance xml:lang='fr'>4,50</balance>
> > <balance xml:lang='ar'>&#x0664;&#x066B;&#x0665;&#0660;</balance>
> [...]
> 
> david at megginson.com wrote:
> > It sounds quite plausible: it still places a burden of locale handling
> > on the processor or the application, but that's inevitable when we're
> > dealing with lexical constraints.  At least with this approach the
> > application will be able to fail gracefully:
> >
> 
> >   Warning: sample.xml line 18 column 12: Cannot validate constraint
> >            "float" for unsupported language "ar" (trying default
> >            locale en-CA).
> >
> 
> Where did the word "float" come from in that error message?
> 
> Is it part of an augmented DTD or Schema, or a stylesheet, or is it
> wired in to the application?

Sorry, I was too hasty in pruning the history of this thread:
somewhere back there David (I think) said (I paraphrase): "Consider a
'float' datatype declaration: it's not as straightforward as you might 
think", and then offered the 4.5/4,5 alternation as an example.

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
     2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
	    Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht at cogsci.ed.ac.uk
		     URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)