Re: "negative count" and unsigned counts

Joseph Kesselman wrote:
> I believe that clause is there because some bindings -- Java being one of
> them -- simply do not have the concept of untyped integers. The IDL lays
> out the desired behavior; the text provides a recommendation of how to
> achieve that behavior when you can't enforce it through the type system.
> 
> The only alternative would have been to not specify the value as untyped in
> the IDL, forcing _every_ binding to test sign and  throw the exception when
> passed a negative value. I believe that was, in fact, suggested and
> rejected; if you have a typesystem it's nice to be able to take advantage
> of it.
> 
> Yeah, it could probably be explained better. But I don't think it's broken,
> and I don't think it's fixable at this late date.

Agreed. I don't think there's anything that really can be fixed here, 
but DOM Level 3 (and maybe arratas to older versions) could explain the 
intended behavior better here, and IMO the DOM TS should not make an 
implementation fail if it doesn't throw a *DOM exception* when a 
negative value is passed as an unsigned type.

> 
> ______________________________________
> Joe Kesselman, IBM Next-Generation Web Technologies: XML, XSL and more.
> "The world changed profoundly and unpredictably the day Tim Berners Lee
> got bitten by a radioactive spider." -- Rafe Culpin, in r.m.filk
> 


-- 
jst

Received on Friday, 19 September 2003 15:22:46 UTC