I can't make the call today as I am travelling but there are a couple of things I'd like to raise. These have come to light while I have been thinking about white space issues.

1) This is related to the white space discussion around entities. One way to handle the situation where the terminator can vary is to allow the DFDL markup properties (dfdl:terminator, dfdl:separator, etc) to be lists, just like we already do for dfdl:nullValues. (IBM's WTX has this capability).

2) We've allowed the prefix of a prefixed length to be explicitly described as a non-event field using dfdl:lengthPrefixType. Should we permit this for markup properties? Instead of supplying a list of possible values, you supply a simple type with enums for the values. This could be viewed as an alternative/complementary to 1). There is a limitations - because we are using XSDL enumeration facet, we are constrained by its syntax so I don't see how we could use our own entity scheme or expressions. Also, I suspect that enums are inherently unordered so we'd need a way of saying which to use on output (use an element of simple type and use XSDL default attribute?). Lastly, we should not force a user to model an initiator as an element/type - most users just see it as a piece of text so just entering the value must still be allowed.

3) Let's say my delimiter is dynamically defined at the start of the data, like EDI allows. We would handle that in DFDL using an expression or variable. However, EDI also allows random white space to appear after the delimiter. Can our expression/entity syntaxes handle this? Does this preclude use of 1) or 2)?

Regards, Steve

Steve Hanson
WebSphere Message Brokers
Hursley, UK
Internet: smh@uk.ibm.com
Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848
----- Forwarded by Steve Hanson/UK/IBM on 23/01/2008 08:27 -----

"Mike Beckerle" <mbeckerle.dfdl@gmail.com>
Sent by: dfdl-wg-bounces@ogf.org

23/01/2008 04:18

To	dfdl-wg@ogf.org
cc
Subject	[DFDL-WG] Agenda for DFDL WG Call

I have these items for the agenda.

1) review of entities proposal

2) OGF 22 - our session is Monday 2/25 at 4:15pm.

Other agenda items?

...mikeb

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