[Bug 10072] math:sqrt incorrectly listed in section 4.7 "Trigonometric functions"

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10072





--- Comment #6 from Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>  2010-07-13 22:20:38 ---
>The right solution is to have:

   Math Functions
     Exponential
     Trigonometric

The section structure of this document was designed, I think, to help readers
find their way around the spec, not to provide a rigorous taxonomy of the
functions on offer. As a taxonomy, the hierarchy considered as a whole is
indefensible; if we had a section headed "Math Functions" then it would
immediately invite comment as to why a number of other functions were not
present in this section.

But I'm going to have to reconsider the section headings anyway as the WG has
today decided to add a number of other functions such as exp, log, and pow.

> Presenting pi as a function seems weird and unnatural

Interesting reaction: I'm surprised by it. I have to say that to me presenting
a constant as a zero-argument function seems entirely natural. The only other
way of doing it that comes to mind is a built-in global variable, and that
seems less consistent with other design decisions made in the language, notably
the presentation of true() and false(). 

>While the constructors true() and false() give us a *unique* representation of
all possible boolean values, introducing functions to represent numerical
constants results in a *redundant* representation for some numerical values.

I'm sorry, I don't follow that argument: why is it bad to have a redundant
representation of some numbers?  Is it bad that in "2" and "+2" we have two
redundant representations of the number 2? 

If you don't like presenting pi() as a function, what would you prefer?

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Received on Tuesday, 13 July 2010 22:20:41 UTC