Re: Attribute values

On 2012-08-14, at 10:50 AM, Uche Ogbuji <uche@ogbuji.net> wrote:

> It seems that data types are not in scope for uXML, but I think that it could still be helpful to distinguish among strings and tokens, so as to allow foo=bar as a legitimate form of attribute value assignation.
> 
> Unfortunately foo=bar syntax would break backward syntactical compatibility pretty badly.  FWIW I do also wish XML 1.0 had supported that syntax, rather than just giving lip service to NMTOKENS.

I was thinking about HTML.

> 
>  
> Frankly, I would like to see data types baked into XML, by way of a corrigendum if necessary, but that is another discussion.
> 
> Hmm. Remember that we are likely to develop a separate, schematic layer for MicroXML, perhaps based on Examplotron or RELAX NG.  Don't you think it would be better to leave (very lightweight and generic) data typing to that layer?

Well, reliance on a schema for type information has seemed, to me, to be a problem.  Type introspection is expensive, or so I am told.

I am just saying that it might be a good idea to enumerate a small set of types that match contemporary programming languages. Maybe just the basic set of types from XSD.  Just a thought.  I leave it to the chair and editors to do with it what they will.

Murray