I made the title corrections below, and cleaned up the "pseudo code" a little, changing fieldWidth to bitStringLength. This is the best I can do for the v1.0 draft.

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 5:47 AM, Steve Hanson <smh@uk.ibm.com> wrote:

Mike

Minor comments before today's call:

I'm happy for 1.0 to restrict the use of lengthUnits='bits' to a specific set of logical types as per your doc.

Section Bits within Bit Strings of Length < 8 should really be Bits within Bit Strings of Length <= 8

Section Numeric Value of a Bit String is better titled Bits within Bit Strings of Length > 8 for symmetry

Regards

Steve Hanson
Programming Model Architect, WebSphere Message  Brokers,
OGF DFDL WG Co-Chair,
Hursley, UK,
Internet: smh@uk.ibm.com,
Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848



From: Mike Beckerle <mbeckerle.dfdl@gmail.com>
To: dfdl-wg@ogf.org
Date: 06/01/2010 04:53
Subject: [DFDL-WG] DFDL bits - version 4
Sent by: dfdl-wg-bounces@ogf.org





I've fixed the issues identified by Suman and Alan.

RE:

1. On the last WG call Steve H suggested allowing lengthUnit='bits' for any logical type as long as the length was a multiple of 8. Did you decide against that?



I did not decide on this either way. Which ever requires the least writing in the spec is fine with me.  

Consider: dfdl:lengthUnits="bits" for dfdl:representation="text". This is exactly equivalent to dfdl:lengthUnits="bytes" with the length, however it is determined (prefix, or explicit) to be divided by 8. Now, what if the length comes back from the expression or prefix as not a multiple of 8. Then we have to detect a processing error..... length in bits not a multiple of 8, and we have to explain why this is an error, etc.

Unless there is a use case that requires this, I'd rather not put it in just for uniformity's sake. I'd rather say that lengthKind="bits" is available only for a specific narrow set of types.

[attachment "DFDL Bits-bigEndian-bias.doc" deleted by Steve Hanson/UK/IBM] --
 dfdl-wg mailing list
 dfdl-wg@ogf.org
 
http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/dfdl-wg







Unless stated otherwise above:
IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598.
Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU