Data types (Was: Re: [Xpath-ng] Proposal for definition of values/lists)

[Jeni Tennison]

Uche,

>> I wonder if we also need a "foreign object" value type?
>
> I recoiled hard from this in XPath 1.1. I think I've come round a
> bit on it. However, if we did support a foreign object type, I would
> want to put a big responsibility on the shoulders of the implementer
> to specify and implement some sort of fallback or generic behavior.
> I don't know exactly how we would spell this, but I'd really want to
> at least try.

I think that we can ask implementers to specify the same things for
this data type as we insist on for data types defined in modules, i.e.
to define how it gets converted into and from strings, numbers,
booleans and lists.

The other thing that I've been pondering is whether we should have a
built-in expanded QName data type. I think that it might be really
useful, particularly for defining nodes (which have names that are
expanded QNames). I have a feeling that this will be contentious, and
of course how exactly a QName is represented is very problematic...

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/