Re: Element for Numbers

Peter Foti (PeterF) <PeterF@SystolicNetworks.com>:
> Christoph Päper Wrote:
>
>> X.Y The *nr* element
>
> What is nr shorthand for?

NumbeR. I had to choose a name, it could as well be <n/> or <number/>.

>> The nr element indicates that a text fragment is of a numeric
>> kind (e.g. date, measurement, price).

That's the goal.

>> It may supply a standardized
>> representation of the enclosed term and may then be treated as a replaced
>> element: the UA replaces the contents by a form best matching the
document
>> language and user preferences.
>
> If this is the goal, then I think your proposal is overkill.

> In addition, what are the benefits of such a system?

> I question whether dimension is the best descriptor for this attribute.

Provide a better name, English is not my native language.

> Also, you should have put your tables explaining the values of this
> attribute before your examples so

Maybe, but I tried to resemble the XHTML 2 specs order.
Yes, types of attribute values are defined previous to elements and its
attributes.

>>   Table 4: Decimal (and binary) modifier prefixes
>
> This table is slightly flawed.

"Slightly"? I mixed 'exa' and 'peta' to 'eta'--that surely tells you one
shouldn't rely on his memories alone.

> But more importantly, you have identified 10^+ 3 as being equal to 2^10

No, I defined (or wanted to define) 'k' as prefix character for either 10^3
or 2^10, depending on whether the following unit is 'B' / 'bit' or not.

> Note that Decimal Multiples and Binary Multiples each have their own
> prefixes and definitions.  2^20 has the symbol Mi, which means mebi

Funny. I've never seen or heard of those, not even in the concerned
lectures.

> At first I thought, instead of taking this complex approach where 1
> container is supposed to cover all sorts of data, why not just take a more
> XML-like approach and define containers for each data type?

You could of course make a new markup language for numbers and use this with
namespace prefixes, but that's even more overkill than more than two new
HTML elements.

> Henry the <ordinal value="7">VII</ordinal> had <int>6</int> wives.
>
> Of course, by your definition, the above example would probably yeild
> something like this in an English browser:
> Henry the seventh had 6 wives.

Okay, my definition wasn't the best. But imagine an aural browser, it won't
read "Henry vee" any more, or "in the year one-thousand-seventy-nine"
instead of "in the year nineteen seventy-nine" (I was told the IBM Homepage
Reader and other screenreaders already have heuristics for this, but why
rely on heuristics in a markup language?). No, that's *not* presentational.

> Yet in my example I wanted to show "VII", not "seventh".

But you don't read it like that.

> a French browser might yeild: Henry the septième had 6 wives.

Replacement isn't everytime wanted or useful. That should be defined more
clearly.

> What is the benefit of a container for numeric data anyway?

Like I said before:
· combine value and unit,
· ease translation, conversion and speech rendering,
· remove ambiguities (How much is one ton? 1000kg or 2000lbs?),
· space saving without loss of information (Really use span and title for
that?) ...

Christoph Päper

Received on Tuesday, 19 November 2002 15:36:10 UTC