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At 9:10 PM -0400 4/13/04, Rich Salz wrote: >Parts of X.fws concern me -- I am thinking of the round-trip from >XML for something like <error-rate>.500</error-rate> going to a >local number, out via ASN.1/DER as an IEEE float, and back. Along >the way it's all too likely to end up as .5, which will break my >digital signature -- and quite rightly, since trailing zero's are >semantically significant. Or worse yet, sending out <error-rate>.400</error-rate> and having it come back as <error-rate>.400000001</error-rate>, especially if .4 happens to be the boundary between an acceptable and unacceptable error rate. As a practical matter, data will be mistyped. I see this in databases to this day. I still remember the student directory back in college that gave everyone in New Jersey a four digit zip code (because New Jersey zips start with 0). Text is more robust against such a human error and misdesign than binary formats are. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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