[Vala] comparison method for standard types?

[Charles Hixson <charleshixsn earthlink net>]

I'm trying to build a generic class that needs to do comparisons among 
it's elements.  For this I need some way of comparing the elements, 
which I can do for custom classes, but is there some standard way to do 
this for the built-in classes?

If I use string as the element being compared, I could build the 
comparison around the read-only property uint8[] data (though I'd prefer 
a less used name, as this would mean that THAT is what I'd need to use 
the property for in all generic parameters that could be used).  
Unfortunately, this doesn't look like it would work for numeric types.

N.B.:  For my purposes I only want to compare one instance with 
something else of the exact same type, but I do want to be able to put 
it into a useful ordering.

Possibly this should be obvious, but I'm just getting started with Vala, 
and I'm not finding it obvious (without requiring that all generic 
parameters implement some particular interface...and I can't even see 
how to apply that restriction).