Re: What's a Number? Was: TJSON

I couldn't agree more strongly with what David said.  The XSD work is
seminal and more than sufficient for anything we might need as far as I
know.
We have done some really interesting things with JSON Schema and JSON-LD.
In both cases we just rely on XSD types for the underlying explicit
meaning.

On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:04 AM, David Ezell <David_E3@verifone.com> wrote:

> Hi All:
>
> As Anders says, "number" as defined on many platforms is fraught with
> pitfalls.
>
> W3C has spent considerable energy on this topic.
>
> Please see:  W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 2:
> Datatypes[1].
> Side note:  Importantly, while the spec has XML in the title, the types do
> not validate XML structures.  Part 2 is ONLY about mapping "strings" to
> value spaces - number types, date types, etc.  There are ways to compose
> new types as well.  But composition is NOT required in XML - types can be
> "born binary" or created in other ways.
>
> The XML Schema WG, under the tutelage of some really smart mathematicians,
> attempted to create a "precisionDecimal" type for version 1.1.  Lacking
> consensus, the WG provided a "cookbook" so that you could use the Datatypes
> to create your own precision decimal type [2].
>
> This type is based on IEEE 754 - 2008.  I would suggest that a green-field
> effort on redoing the work in Datatypes (2012) is nuts.  IMO.  If people
> are >serious< about creating new Datatypes, the core definitions could
> easily support either a simple basic type system for JSON [3], or even one
> that allows composition of new types, depending on taste for complexity.
> But the tenets are sound, and have been hammered for about a decade and a
> half.
>
> Best regards,
> David
>
> [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema11-2/
> [2] https://www.w3.org/TR/xsd-precisionDecimal/
> [3] I've seen versions of JSON schema that allow exactly this kind of type
> reference.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Anders Rundgren [mailto:anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com]
> > Sent: Friday, November 04, 2016 1:12 AM
> > To: Tony Arcieri
> > Cc: Interledger Community Group
> > Subject: What's a Number? Was: TJSON
> >
> > There's probably a single data type in JSON that cause 99% of the
> problems
> > and that's numbers.
> >
> > The scientific people want 80-bits IEEE
> > The Java/Python/C# folks want true 64-bit integers The crypto geeks want
> > really big integers The financial guys want big decimals
> >
> > These problems stem from JavaScript and they all have the same
> > solution/workaround; put the data in a JSON "string".
> >
> > Does this limitation/deficiency motivate a [sort of] new JSON?
> >
> > In my book it does not but it seems that a lot of other people think it
> is a
> > great idea so I can only wish you good luck!
> >
> > Anders
>
>


-- 
Shane McCarron
Projects Manager, Spec-Ops