[uf-rest] Introducing JAHAH

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 5, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> On Jan 5, 2006, at 8:40 PM, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>
>> On Jan 5, 2006, at 8:24 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
>>>
>>> One of the things about microformats (in case you hadn't learned  
>>> how the game is played here :-) is to try to follow existing  
>>> conventions as much as possible.  In this case, I started with  
>>> Mac OS X plists, and moved to XML Schema Datatypes:
>>>
>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#built-in-datatypes
>>>
>>> Yes, it is somewhat complex, but it is a well-defined standard.    
>>> I'm certainly open to doing something simpler, but I'd want to  
>>> have some reasonably strong precedent, so it doesn't just become  
>>> personal taste.  I do like the idea of defaulting to a generic,  
>>> high-precision 'number' class, especially since it is easy to  
>>> specialize using multiple classes.
>>>
>>> I personally like the Mac OS X plist typing (number, data, etc.),  
>>> but I don't know if that's normative enough to drive a web standard.
>>
>> Personally I think it should be the simplest thing that could  
>> possibly work.  Isn't that the idea behind microformats?  If  
>> someone wanted to play the XML game, they would...
>
> Yes, I'm a big fan of TSTTW. :-)   The problem is, the more one  
> deviates from standard practice the less certainty there is for the  
> result.  Thus, a tension between doing something that I (or you)  
> perceive as simpler, and something that is easy to converge around.
>
> The ideal, IMHO, would be if we could find a reasonable set of  
> datatypes that was simpler than XML Schema, but  more neutral than  
> Mac OS X plist.   Something like C would be ideal, but has no  
> datetime..
>
> That's why we need a wiki page for, to start collecting the  
> standard types used in various languages and systems, to see if we  
> can find a common ground...

How about taking JavaScript names?  Neutral enough.

string, number, boolean, date.  data doesn't exist in JavaScript, but  
that's a damn good name for it because it's the appropriate URL scheme.

-bob