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At 9:31 AM +0100 5/7/02, Michael Kay wrote: >I don't think it's acceptable, if people go to >the trouble of defining the data types they are using in their documents, >that XPath and XSLT should ignore this information and treat eveything as if >it were text (or guess that it might be a number, as XPath 1.0 does). It is all text. The idea that there are any numbers whatsoever in an XML document is an illusion that is sometimes useful in a particular local processing environment. XSLT should allow particular strings to be converted to numbers (including NaN) at the specific request of the stylesheet. The stylesheet needs to be in control, not the schema. If the stylesheet says it's a number, then it's a number, whether the schema agrees or not. >Anyway, we get messages every week on xsl-list from people asking how to >manipulate dates. I would love to reduce the complexity of the solution, but >I don't think we can deny that the requirement exists. > There are no dates in XML documents either. There are strings and elements which some local processing environments may choose to treat as dates. In fact, I'm already doing this today using EXSLT, without any schema anywhere in sight. Schemas are no more necessary to add date processing functions to XSLT than they are to add numbers. This is a huge red herring. -- +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer | +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001) | | http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/ | | http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ | | Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
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