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Roger L. Costello wrote: > This is quite a radical approach. I am surprised that there > aren't more comments, since the "conventional wisdom" is > not to treat kilometer as a property/relation/function, but rather > to treat it as the value of a property, e.g., > > <River id="Yangtze"> > <length unit="kilometer">6300</length> > </River> The advantage of "<kilometres>6300</kilometres>" as opposed to <length unit="kilometre"> is in modularity of type definition. With the unit= approach, you're probably saying that the type of length is an attribute that can be km/miles/nautical miles/etc, and a value which is a number. However, if you want to allow other types of length measurement - non numerical ones such as giving the name of another object of the same length, say - then with the latter approach your 'type' might need to widen to include any value as the distance, not expressing the fact that for kilometres it'd better be a number, while if you have a "<kilometres>" element then you can state that it contains an integer while a "<same-as>" element contains a string. However, smarter type systems let you define types in terms of things like "distances where unit='kilometres'" and thus allow you to organise it however you want, so it becomes a moot point. I find "unit=''" more pleasing on the eye, myself. > Thoughts? /Roger ABS
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