update on item #23

[Seth Proctor <Seth.Proctor@Sun.COM>]

I wanted to give everyone a quick update on what's going on here. Item 
23 involves changing the references for time and its associated 
functions so that we get the semantics that were oringinally intended. 
Steve Hanna sent an email about this some time back with the details, 
and there was general agreement with his points.

Since then, the XMLSchema group has also revisted the time issue, and is 
working on an entirely new definition for time and its associated 
functions (as I understand it...I'm not a member of that WG). Until it's 
clear what they're doing, I don't believe that we should make a 
decision. It's critical that we get this right, since it's a problem for 
many people in the 1.0/1.1 specs.

The crux of the issue right now seems to be in how they're defining time 
values and how time zones are used. As I understand it, they're working 
on ordering for _all_ time values, even those that appear equal. Because 
I don't have all the details yet, I won't try to go into more depth now. 
I'm working on learning more, and I will report back as soon as I can, 
but I don't expect that to be until early January. In the meantime, if 
anyone on this list can provide more details, I would appreciate it!


seth