RELAX NG by Eric van der Vlist will be published by O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN: 0596004214)
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The pattern facet, and regular expressions in general, are like a Swiss army knife when constraining simple datatypes. It can be used for many functions, can compensate for many of the limitations of the other facets, and is often used to define user datatypes in various formats such as ISBN numbers, telephone numbers, or custom date formats. However, just like real Swiss army knives, there are limits to its usefulness.
Cutting a tree with a Swiss army knife is time consuming, tiring, and dangerous. Writing regular expressions may also become time consuming, tiring, and dangerous as the number of combinations grows. One should try to keep them as simple as possible.
A Swiss army knife cannot change lead into gold, and no facet can change the primary type of a simple datatype. A string datatype restricted to match a custom date format will still retain the properties of a string and will never acquire the facets of a datetime datatype. This means that there is no effective way to express localized date formats.
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All text is copyright Eric van der Vlist, Dyomedea. During development, I give permission for non-commercial copying for educational and review purposes. After publication, all text will be released under the Free Software Foundation GFDL.