- From: Albert Lunde <Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu>
- Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 22:04:24 -0600
- To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
>I believe that there are two types of property values
>in the world, simple values, and compound values.
>
>People think they *already know* what the syntax and
>semantics of simple property values are. They have been
>using them for decades. They are integers, strings,
>datetimes, etc. People know, and, therefore, servers know,
>exactly what to do with them.
This may be reasonable in some other context; but right now, it looks me,
like WEBDAV intends to treat dead properties as containers which can be set
to arbitrary (internationalized) string values, with no further knowledge
of data type and symantics.
Bringing in the "XML Data" datatypes you refer to would be a significant
change to WEBDAV.
Server's _don't_ always know what people know; that's what makes this an
interoperability minefield.
If one client assumes that properties are character by character the same,
and another client or server "knows" enough to transform them into
"equivalent" forms, you might get _some_ interoperability, but you might
also get strange things happening.
---
Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu
Received on Sunday, 1 November 1998 23:05:59 UTC