RE: Question about number types

> ps. Please consider this a formal comment on the 
> specification. If desired I can submit it to the bug tracker.

If you want to make a formal comment, then I think your chances of achieving
a change in the spec are far greater if you submit it as such (rather than
as a question), with an indication of how you think the specification should
change: and preferably taking into account the practical reality that the
WG's freedom of manoevre is limited by compatibility concerns.

There's a lot of interesting stuff here and there is no single right answer.
The QT specs went with a definition of equality based on the notion of
"promotion" (converting decimal -> float -> double). That has its own
problems, for example it isn't transitive, but from a pragmatic engineering
perspective it works moderately well. Any other solution is also going to
have problems. However, the schema spec is clear that a host language using
XML schema data types can define its own operators on those types; you don't
have to stick with the limited set defined in the schema spec itself.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

Received on Thursday, 3 July 2008 08:17:33 UTC