RE: 7.10.4 (PR#147)

Hi Michael, 

Could you please let us know what should be put on the final disposition 
of this comment?
We did indicate that our function does not recognize leap seconds (in 
accord with XPath 2.0).
Based on the use cases elaborated at the end of the discussion thread 
(topmost below), would you be willing to agree (however reluctantly) with 
the group's desire to proceed with this longstanding XForms 1.0 function 
for now and deal with any semantic differences with the XPath 2.0 when we 
transition to XPath 2.0 in XForms 2.0?

Or do you want us to record a disagree result, or do you want us to record 
a formal objection? 

Thank you for your consideration.  If you could please let us know by 
Monday, this would help as we are coming up to the transition meeting with 
the director and the current setting is 'No response' to the end of the 
thread.

Best regards,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer





John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA 
Sent by: www-forms-editor-request@w3.org
10/18/2007 02:56 AM

To
"Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>
cc
w3c-xml-query-wg@w3.org, www-forms-editor@w3.org, 
www-forms-editor-request@w3.org, "'John Boyer'" 
<xforms-issues@mn.aptest.com>
Subject
RE: 7.10.4 (PR#147)







Hi Michael, 

I agree that in the general case, without looking at the specific 
functions at hand, it might seem very short-sighted. 

The real question that needs an answer is whether the difference of 
semantic breaks the real uses cases we have for this function, which are 

1) Compare two dates 
seconds-from-dateTime(D1) &lt; seconds-from-dateTime(D2) 

2) Difference, which can be string manipulated into a duration if needed 
seconds-from-dateTime(D1) - seconds-from-dateTime(D2) 

3) Compute 2 hours from now 
adjust-dateTime-to-timezone(seconds-to-dateTime(seconds-from-dateTime(now()) 
+ 7200)) 

Can you let us know please if you think the difference of semantic will 
break one of these three expressions? 

Thank you, 
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer




"Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com> 
Sent by: www-forms-editor-request@w3.org 
10/18/2007 01:53 AM 


To
"'John Boyer'" <xforms-issues@mn.aptest.com> 
cc
<w3c-xml-query-wg@w3.org>, <www-forms-editor@w3.org> 
Subject
RE: 7.10.4 (PR#147)










Well, I'm clearly not going to persuade you, but it seems a very
short-sighted attitude to me.

If the XForms specification doesn't support XPath 2.0 until 2010, then an
increasing number of vendors will support it unilaterally (some already 
do),
which means the coexistence and transition issues will be even worse.

In any, case, the argument seems a bit like the millenium bug: we won't
worry about this problem because it will be three years before users 
notice
it.

Michael Kay


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Boyer [mailto:xforms-issues@mn.aptest.com] 
> Sent: 18 October 2007 09:27
> To: mike@saxonica.com
> Cc: w3c-xml-query-wg@w3.org; www-forms-editor@w3.org
> Subject: Re: 7.10.4 (PR#147)
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> I received your follow-up recommending that we add 
> seconds-from-1970() and deprecate seconds-from-dataTime() to 
> make future updating to XForms 2.0/XPath 2.0 easier.
> 
> This only seems to add confusing complexities to XForms 1.1 
> in order to make at best a minor improvement to the future 
> update capabilities.  The update of 1.x content to XForms 2.0 
> should have much bigger issues than this.
> It is also by no means clear that a form author undergoing 
> such a large update of content would even want to retain the 
> 1970 semantic anyway because the typical call of these 
> functions is to do date math and comparisons.
> 
> Finally, it should be noted that the current estimated 
> (optimistic) timeframe for an XForms 2.0 recommendation is 
> the end of 2010.
> 
> Best regards,
> John Boyer
> 
> > 
> > 
> >     L. The seconds-from-dateTime() function poses a 
> particular problem
> >     because XPath 2.0 offers a function with the same name and
> >     different semantics.
> > 
> >     You should define whether leap second are taken into 
> account, and
> >     if so, specify how.
> > 
> >