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QT approved comment: Type hierarchy: At the same time as introducing anyAtomicType, might not there be some sense in introducing anyListType and anyUnionType, and perhaps even anyComplexType? [For example, I think it would be useful on occasions in XSLT/XQuery to determine whether the type of an attribute is list-valued, and this could be done as "@a instance of attribute(*, xs:anyListType)". There are other solutions, such as introducing metadata interrogatives.]
On 2007-04-20 the editors discussed this issue. They respectfully suggest that this issue is likely to have marginal benefit, and that it not be given further consideration at this time. It's not clear to us what exactly one would be seeking to accomplish by defining anyListType or anyUnionType. Our best guess is that the idea is to make it easier to know which types are list-valued, or union-valued, by inspection of the type hierarchy. But the information is present already, in the properties of the simple type in question.
>It's not clear to us what exactly one would be seeking to accomplish by defining anyListType or anyUnionType. Two things, I guess: (a) QT languages currently provide no access to information about types other than their names and their place in the type hierarchy; so the proposal would provide more information to users of these languages without inventing new mechanisms for access to metadata. (b) Even if access to metadata properties were available, it wouldn't fall into the type system: one wouldn't be able to define a match pattern in XSLT that matches all list-valued attributes. But the comment was phrased more as something to consider in order to maintain symmetry and tidiness in the type hierarchy given that anyAtomicType is being added at the same time. There won't be any push-back if it's dropped.
Telcon discussion. The WG still thinks that while this may make the REC more complete, it will be fairly disruptive at this point. We request that you either allow us to close this issue or else let us know other feelings.
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