Re: Allow hex format for integer types.

I don't speak officially for the XML Schema workgroup, but I think it's 
fair to say that features such as Hex (or octal) representations were 
considered during the design of our datatypes.  My impression is that we 
rejected them as not quite making an 80/20 cut in terms of value vs. cost. 
 Any feature like this adds some complexity to implementations, to the 
size of the specifications, to interop testing, etc.  We might then have 
had to introduce constraining facets to allow one to introduce 
restrictions for the case where only one or another form was desired.  We 
might then have needed predefined types for each to promote interop 
(HexFormInteger, DecimalFormInteger, OctalFormInteger).   So, we decided 
not to head down that road.

There are many other similar compromises we had to make.  For example, one 
can easily imagine many convenience forms for dates and times that are not 
supported.  I am sorry that in this case we made a choice that is less 
than ideal for your needs, but I think our choice was reasonable, or 
certainly defensible.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn                              Voice: 1-617-693-4036
IBM Corporation                                Fax: 1-617-693-8676
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
------------------------------------------------------------------







Liam Quin <liam@w3.org>
Sent by: www-xml-schema-comments-request@w3.org
12/18/2002 12:49 PM

 
        To:     wout.de.zeeuw@philips.com
        cc:     www-xml-schema-comments@w3.org, www-xml-blueberry-comments@w3.org, (bcc: 
Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM)
        Subject:        Re: Allow hex format for integer types.



THnk you for contacting us.

On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 05:37:13AM -0500, wout.de.zeeuw@philips.com wrote:
> Currently I'm missing the ability of integers in xml documents to be 
> defined in hex format (e.g. 0x20003cd9). In engineering environments hex 

> format is much more common and readable than the decimal format.
> 
> But I guess that would mean a change in the xml spec and not in the 
schema 
> spec.

XML itself already allows hexadecimal for numerical character references,
such as &#x3f0;, but does not otherwise know anything about integers.

You could consider using schema pattern facets to match 0x[a-zA-Z0-9]+,
I sppose.  If that is not sufficient, the schema working group may
respond to your mail.

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, liam@w3.org, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
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Received on Wednesday, 18 December 2002 15:16:01 UTC