Re: ISSUE-126 (Revisit Datatypes): A new proposal for the real <-> float <-> double conundrum

FYI
When I designed the mKR language, I purposely avoided placing any 
constraints
on the space,time,view specification of context.  This permits the user to 
choose
whatever level of detail is appropriate in a given situation.  The resulting 
descriptions
are always useful, and sometimes just plain fun!

Some of my specifications:
    space, time = here, now
    time = past, present, future
    time = yesterday, today
    space = my house, the store
    view = Aristotle, feminist
    view = RDF, OWL, mKR, CycL, Amazon, Google

Dick
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Peterson" <davep@iit.edu>
To: "Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>; "'Alan Ruttenberg'" 
<alanruttenberg@gmail.com>; "'Rob Shearer'" <rob.shearer@comlab.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: <public-webont-comments@w3.org>; <public-owl-wg@w3.org>; 
<www-xml-schema-comments@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 6:51 AM
Subject: RE: ISSUE-126 (Revisit Datatypes): A new proposal for the real <-> 
float <-> double conundrum


>
> At 10:13 AM +0100 2008-07-06, Michael Kay wrote:
>>  >
>>>  I don't see that moments in time, segments of time, and
>>>  repeating intervals make up a sensible datatype.  That's my
>>>  particular problem with the idea.
>>
>>Well, one can certainly conceive of a generalization of these types that 
>>is
>>a three-dimensional space whose axes are the start instant (perhaps
>>unknown), the duration (perhaps zero), and the interval between repeats
>>(perhaps infinite). Alternatively, and perhaps more conveniently, you can
>>think of it as a seven-dimensional space containing year, month, day, 
>>hour,
>>minute, second, and timezone-offset, allowing components at either end to 
>>be
>>omitted, where the absence of a high-order component indicates a repeating
>>interval and the absence of a low-order component indicates a time span.
>>
>>E.g., how does one define order?  Is 14:00:00 less than or equal to 1997?
>>
>>You could define an ordering (if you wanted to) by filling in the gaps,
>>treating 14:00:00 as say 0000-01-01T14:00:00 and 1997 as
>>1997-01-01T00:00:00. Or you could say that the new primitive type is
>>unordered, only the subtypes are ordered, as we do with the two duration
>>subtypes.
>>>
>>>  I'm curious how the simplification would be effected for QT.
>>
>>Difficult to do retrospectively, but with such a type, instead of XSLT
>>defining three functions format-date, format-time, and format-dateTime, it
>>could have defined a single function which would work perfectly well on 
>>all
>>eight types, as well as on other logically-consistent subtypes like
>>gHourMinute.
>
> Good ideas all.  Fodder for Schema 2.0, I'd say.  It takes time to
> think these things out; equality didn't diverge from identity in 1.0
> because we didn't have time to think out the ramifications.  Sigh--
> even standards creation is a publish-or-perish world, and if a version
> of the standard doesn't get out the door in a reasonable time, even
> if the possible improvements haven't been thought out yet, the
> creating standards group finds its resources gone and no standard
> at all gets out.
>
> One does the best one can, and hopes one hasn't closed off too many
> useful possibilities for the next round--or left things totally
> screwed up by not closing up some loopholes that leave the standard
> useless.  A fine balancing act.
>
> (This, of course, is preaching to the choir WRT Mike Kay himself;
> he's been involved in the production of at least several standards.)
> -- 
> Dave Peterson
> SGMLWorks!
>
> davep@iit.edu
>
>
Dick McCullough
http://mKRmKE.org/
Ayn Rand do speak od mKR done;
knowledge := man do identify od existent done;
knowledge haspart proposition list;
mKE do enhance od "Real Intelligence" done;

Received on Sunday, 6 July 2008 19:37:35 UTC