[dfdl-wg] Issues: additional data types

[Martin Westhead]

Mike Beckerle wrote:

> I don't draw a distinction between a sequence of N bytes and an N-byte 
> represenational-size object of undetermined type. Or rather, the 
> difference is just of the intent of the person using it.

I think that this discussion raises important issues of scope and 
extensibility.

I think that it would be reasonable to have an annotation to capture the 
fact that a sequence of bytes is (usually) to be treated as a block. I 
think such an annotation would be description metadata.

It should be possible to attach rich metadata to the tags to allow an 
application to get access to information about what it might do with 
such a block (or indeed any other type).

There is an important question as to how much of this metadata we try to 
define. My take would be as little as possible. The metadata could get 
pretty involved, you need to know 1) its code 2) its java 3) it requires 
JVM 1.4+ 4) it needs Swing or whatever.

Cheers,

Martin