[lextypes] kicking off

[Simon St.Laurent]

The last few months have seen a growing number of calls for an
alternative approach to data typing, as irritation with W3C XML Schema
part 2 seems to have set in on a number of different fronts.  The past
week in particular has revealed two documents (addressing somewhat
different problems) which I think offer interesting prospects for future
development:

Jeni Tennison's Defining non-WXS datatypes
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/xml-dev/1737032

John Cowan's RELAX NG Type Lattices, draft 0
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/relax-ng-comment/200307/msg00000.
html

I'm hoping that this list can serve as a tightly-focused and
publicly-archived list for discussion of these topics.  I suspect
everyone is aware that I am very fond of xml-dev, but there are times
when it's better to retreat to a quieter corner and bring back
(hopefully) results.  Smaller conversations combined with public
consideration seems like a good recipe for working on projects.

That said, how are people feeling about data types?  Is there enough
experience in the field to move beyond complaint and start working on
new approaches?  My feeling is yes, but I suspect there are a lot of
possible approaches.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org