In the OASIS committee working on SRU 2.0 we are in the process now of 
taking a critical look at Explain and we have a technical question about the 
schema. Perhaps one of you Explain implementors might have some insight.

(There no longer seems to be anyone claiming ownership of Explain, and if 
nobody steps forward, I am going to claim ownership, on behalf of the SRU 
maintenance agency, within the next few weeks.)

Our question is this  There are several datatypes whose definitions look 
like this:

                    <xs:element name='host'>
                     <xs:complexType mixed='true'>
                     </xs:complexType>
                    </xs:element>

What does it mean?   How would it differ from:

                    <xs:element name='host' type = "xs:string">


We know what mixed='true' means, if for example, you had

                 <xs:element name='host'>
                 <xs:complexType mixed='true'>
                   <xs:sequence>
                     <xs:element name="a"/>
                     <xs:element name="b"/>
                   </xs:sequence>
                </xs:complexType>
               </xs:element>

Then you could have an instance of element <host> that would look like:

<host> (text preceding element a) <a>(content of element a) </a> (text 
between elements a and b) <b>(content of element b)</b> (text following 
element b) </host>

In other words, mixed content and elements, which would not be allowed 
without mixed="true"

 But what does the first mean?  The complex definition does not define any 
elements, and it seems to us that it degenerates to nothing more than a 
string.  Nothing else makes any sense.

Anyone have any other interpretations?

Thanks.

--Ray