David Ezell sent the following reply:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-xml-schema-wg/2009Feb/0007.html

(In reply to comment #0)
> On 25 February, 2009, Jonathan Robie reiterated the problems that QT will have
> if XML Schema 1.1 includes precision decimal.  That email is here:
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-xml-schema-wg/2009Feb/0006.html
> 

I want to comment on the possibility of the XML Schema WG removing precisionDecimal from the XML Schema Datatypes v 1.1 draft.
 
IEEE 754-2008 decimal floating point [1] is a useful data type, especially in areas like financial applications.  There is a community of users who benefit from it.  Customers of ours have contacted us with concern about the possible lack of future XML support.. 
 
I won't talk specifically about other's products, but we believe there is good and growing support for IEEE 754-2008.  Intel produced decimal floating point math library that has also been contributed to open source gcc 4.3 for decimal floating-point calculations on Intel Architecture platforms.[2]  Our support libraries are also used in other places, and we aren't the only ones with support.
 
The previous lack of a standard led to a variety of proprietary approaches that will have to be supported for some time, but IEEE-754 should change that in the future.  Part of that process is adoption in specs like XML Schema Datatypes.
 
Bottom line is it's a useful data type for a set of important applications and there is good and growing support across a variety of platforms.  This isn't a life or death type decision (well, at least not for us), but keeping it in seems the right thing to do for the community that needs it.  We hope you don't drop it.    
 
[1]  "IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic," IEEE Std 754-2008 , vol., no., pp.1-58, Aug. 29 2008 URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4610935&isnumber=4610934
[2] http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2008/03/06/intel-decimal-floating-point-math-library/
 
    wayne
 
**********************************
Wayne Carr 
W3C Advisory Committee rep
Intel Corporation 
wayne.carr@intel.com
**********************************

The XML Schema WG discussed this issue during this morning's telcon.

We thank the XSL and XML Query WGs for reiterating the importance 
of this question and ensuring that it is not lost track of.  The XML Schema
WG remains committed to the plan we agreed on with the QT working
groups in June 2007 and recorded in comment 2 of bug 3120
(http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=3120#c2):
we plan to mark precisionDecimal as a feature at risk in our
Candidate Recommendation, and the exit criteria for CR will
include not only implementations in the context of XSD 1.1, but 
also the general state of industry uptake, and the state of the IEEE
documents.  (The IEEE documents, as it happens, have now been
published as final documents, so that might be regarded as 
having been overtaken by events.)

Since we expect to take up the issue raised in this bug report
when we progress XSD 1.1 from CR to PR, we are accordingly 
closing this issue as LATER.

Please let us know if you agree with this resolution of your issue, 
by adding a comment to the issue record and changing the 
Status of the issue to Closed. Or, if you do not agree with this 
resolution, please add a comment explaining why. If you wish 
to appeal the WG's decision to the Director, then also change 
the Status of the record to Reopened. If you wish to record 
your dissent, but do not wish to appeal the decision to the 
Director, then change the Status of the record to Closed. If 
we do not hear from you in the next ten days or so, we will 
assume you agree with the WG decision.

The XML Schema WG's disposition of this issue has been conveyed
to Jonathan Robie and through him to the XML Query and XSL 
Working Groups.

Archived copies may be retrieved from
http://www.w3.org/mid/2CD35EEB-3D45-4900-97DD-A78CADF8D5E3@blackmesatech.com
(member-only link).