Re: Finiteness of xsd:gMonthDay etc

Please take my approval as routine.

A very minor point this one.

Jeremy

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
> Jeremy,
> 
> long, long ago, you wrote the XML Schema comments list
> [1] to inquire about the fact that in appendix A, the 
> schema document with declarations for the built-in
> datatypes gMonthDay, gDay, and gMonth gives their cardinality 
> as 'countably infinite', despite the fact that there seem
> only to be 366 values for the first and third, and only 
> twelve for the second.  
> 
> You ask, generously, "is this an oversight?"
> 
> With regrets for the length of time it has taken us to
> answer you, I can now say pretty definitely yes, it was.
> I speculate that the confusion was caused by the reflection
> that the number of months in the Gregorian calendar, viewed
> as continuous segments of time, is not twelve but countably
> infinite.  That is to say, when we wrote that gMonth was
> countably infinite, we were confused by the fact that 
> each of the twelve values of gMonth itself denotes a
> countably infinite set of time periods.  Another capitulation
> to the fallacy of composition, I'm afraid.
> 
> The WG has not officially approved a fix for the wording,
> but the fix is obvious and I'm pretty sure it will be
> approved in due course.  If you wish to check our work,
> you might consult the proposal in [2] and let us know
> whether you approve.  If we don't hear from you in the next
> month or so, we'll assume you approve.
> 
> Thank you for your patience.
> 
> Michael Sperberg-McQueen
> 
> [1]
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-schema-comments/2002OctDec/0068.html
> 
> [2] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=2179
>

Received on Monday, 23 January 2006 09:07:03 UTC