[tei-council] datatype of @n in att.global

[Sebastian Rahtz]

James Cummings wrote:
>
> In playing devil's advocate, I'd like to call as witness, one Sebastian
> P.Q. Rahtz.  Mr Rahtz, did you not around 2006-09-05T08:33 in a discussion
> of renaming filenames, respond to Lou Burnard's suggestion that we could
> "supply them as values for the @n attribute on <div1>s" with the sarcastic
> quip that "We wouldn't want to abuse @n with free text now would we...."?
>   
i plead insanity, m'lud
> The labels you indicate above are compound ones, that could easily be given
> in some form which does not require spaces.
oh yeah? in what sense is "6 (3)" different from "6.3" as valid
use of @n to record a section number?
>   (And file paths really
> shouldn't be used as labels.)  
why not? again, how is it different from 6.2?
> The description refers to 'a number' (or
> label), that is a *single* number.  "45 (3)" is two numbers, though could
> easily be given as 45-3 or something else and massaged in processing.
>   
that just means the <desc> is wrong. @n is used, surely, to record
(eg) the number-like prefix on heading?  so "42" is fine, we all agree;
and I am sure you would also accept "4.2" _because it looks like a
number_. It ain't. its 4 and 2 separated by a "."; in which case why
not separated by a space?


-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431