Re: Proposal of an element for numbers

>  This attribute defines the format of the (numerical) string enclosed
>  by the current element. It may either contain a space seperated list
>  of keywords or a format string.

I would suggest that if such an element is needed, that rather than give
a format and expect the browser to decipher the presentational form of
the number, the attributes should provide the data type (preferably in 
terms of XML schema data types) and the value in the canonical form
used in XML schemas.  I might even suggest that the implied value of
the canonical form is the element content, allowing direct use of XML
schema types, which will make machine processing easier, anyway.

A complementary requirement on style sheets ought to be to ensure that
they can format forwards from the canonical format to the localised formats
for common world languages.  In the longer term, the use of anything other
than canonical form values should be discouraged, bringing XHTML more into
line with the expected use of XML for EDI applications.

Received on Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:55:46 UTC