- From: C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>
- Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2017 16:37:35 -0700
- To: Steven Pemberton <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>
- Cc: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>, XForms <public-xformsusers@w3.org>
> On Nov 6, 2017, at 2:03 AM, Steven Pemberton <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl> wrote: > > > https://www.w3.org/community/xformsusers/wiki/XPath_Expressions_Module#The_power.28.29_Function > > ... > > One possible wording is > > "Both arguments may be fractional and negative. If the possible results are real, it returns the positive one. Otherwise it returns NaN.” The middle sentence makes sense immediately following a discussion of square roots, but it will sound very odd to a reader thinking of power(2,7) and the like. It’s also not clear to this reader how that rule applies to the example you gave of power(-1, 0.2). There are five results, but only one of them is real; is the intention to return -1, or NaN? Perhaps explicit quantification would help. One of: If all possible results are real (as for power(4, 0.5)), then ... If any of the possible results are real, then … The current wording also seems to assume that at most one possible result will be a positive real. (If that is guaranteed to be the case, that might be worth saying in an aside or a note.) (Removes language-lawyer hat and goes to get a cup of coffee.) ******************************************** C. M. Sperberg-McQueen Black Mesa Technologies LLC cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com http://www.blackmesatech.com ********************************************
Received on Monday, 6 November 2017 23:38:35 UTC