Alan Powell MP 211, IBM UK Labs, Hursley, Winchester, SO21 2JN, England Notes Id: Alan Powell/UK/IBM email: alan_powell@uk.ibm.com Tel: +44 (0)1962 815073 Fax: +44 (0)1962 816898 ----- Forwarded by Alan Powell/UK/IBM on 23/01/2008 17:18 ----- Alan Powell/UK/IBM 23/01/2008 12:08 To DFDL cc Subject OGF DFDL WG call today 23-01-2008 - agenda Review items from previous calls. - OGF22 - Specification drafts - Expression language - Property precedence - UML for DFDL schema Discussion for this call - Review entity proposal - Steve's suggestions 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)? Alan Powell MP 211, IBM UK Labs, Hursley, Winchester, SO21 2JN, England Notes Id: Alan Powell/UK/IBM email: alan_powell@uk.ibm.com Tel: +44 (0)1962 815073 Fax: +44 (0)1962 816898 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 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