Re: tpaml spec

[David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org>]

> As promised at the Boston meeting, here is the latest tpaml specification.
> Pleas read and comment via the list.

Some things strike me as very strange, but this could well be due to my
relative cluelessness in this field:

1. Dates in "United States format" ? There is no single US format (all three
"orders" are in use in the US). Why not use one of the existing standard
date and time
formats ? e.g. ISO8601 (http://www.whatis.com/isodatef.htm). or RFC1123 or
ASN.1 GeneralizedTime.

2. Same point but relating to physical addresses. US format only ????
Addresses are quite hard to represent, but surely something better
than US format only can be done ? Can all address formats be
"converted" to US format ?

3. Same point but relating to telephone numbers. ITU E.164 is your friend.

I'm guessing that the intention is to remove these type definitions from
this spec at some point (seems strange to be defining the essence
of a telephone number in a specification for a trading prototol !), but
that for expediency they're defined in-line at present. I couldn't however
find a note to that effect in the text.