numberType in eml2

[Matt Jones]

Dan,

Although I agree there is some variance generally in how the terms are 
used, there really isn't a problem in EML2 because we explicitly defined 
what we mean by the terms natural and whole (ie, which includes 0 and 
which doesn't).  As some people will be already using the existing terms 
as defined in EML2, I think it is better to keep things as they are than 
force yet more conversions on people.

Matt

Dan Higgins wrote:
> Hi All,
>    There was a recent discussion on irc about the 'numberType' element 
> in eml2. It was noted that the allowed values are; 'natural', 'whole', 
> 'integer', and 'real'. The difficulty was in different interpretations 
> of 'natural' and 'whole'. These different interpretations are also noted in
> 
> http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NaturalNumber.html
> 
> 
> this link suggests that due to the lack of standard useage, one should 
> use the terms
> 
> positive integers  (1,2,3,...)
> non-negative integers (0,1,2,3,...)
> integers (...,-2,-1,0,1,2,...)
> 
> I would like to propose that in any updated version of eml we use these 
> terms as allowed values for the 'numberType' instead of the current 
> allowed values. The meanings are much more obvious.
> 
> Dan Higgins
> NCEAS Software Developer
> 
> _______________________________________________
> eml-dev mailing list
> eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org
> http://www.ecoinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/eml-dev

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Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Fax: 425-920-2439    Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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