[tei-council] datatypes -- syd's comments

[Syd Bauman]

> Ah! good point. But what is your recommendation?
> (a) decide whether probability shd be expressed as a number between 0 
> and 1 or as a number between 0 and 100 and then enforce one of them (if 
> so, which?)
> (b) allow both as alternatives, but require that the latter (1 to 100) 
> is always followed by a percent sign
> (c) leave things as proposed but note the constraint that numbers 
> between 0 and 1 must be expressed including a decimal point.
> 
> Being a lazy person, I have a slight preference for (c) though it's hard 
> to care very much about this:  the total number of attributes affected 
> in the current version of edw90 table is one (1)

Which one do you have in mind? I count six (6). In any case, I agree
it's not all that important, but have a strong preference for (b).


> I don't completely understand this comment since tei.data.numeric
> maps to xsd:decimal which does support floating point numbers. I
> assume what you mean is that such numbers can't be represented
> using the mantis+exponent (aka "scientific") notation. So it will
> permit "1.23456789" but not "2e0.134"

You are absolutely correct, I meant scientific notation.


> Again, I find very few real use cases in the edw90 table -- in fact
> the only case where I suppose it might be plausible to permit the
> scientific notation is the value attribute on <numeric> and <num>

But we know that there are users who need, or at least want, to be
able to use scientific notation. Especially since there is a W3C
datatype ready-made that supports it, I can see no reason to tell
them they can't use scientific notation.


> I can't see any use case where you might want to supply a
> percentage so I am not very enthusiastic about that either.

To me a percentage is just another way of representing a floating
point number. 145% is the same as 1.45, but some users will be
happier with the former. Not a bid deal in either case, I don't
think. 

> Would tei.data.probability suit them?

I don't understand the quetsion.