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

Fri Jun 29 06:24:59 EDT 2007

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> pragmatically, if I meet in a document
> 
>     4 (3)  Alternatives to Litigation
> 
> and this is determined to be a header, am
> I not right to mark this up as
> 
>   <div n="4 (3)">
>     <head>Alternatives to Litigation</head>
> 
> ? If I am right, then the only way to avoid my
> plea is to say "but no book ever has done this" :-}
> 
> If I am wrong, how _do_ I mark it up?
> 

One school of thought is to ask why this text uses such a strange 
numbering system and encode the purposes behind it. What does "4 (3)" 
mean? If it means "the third subsection of part 4", then we would regard 
this as a formatting issue. You shouldn't encode it at all: the 
stylesheet is expected to generate it. If it means "this is chapter 4 
even though it's actually the third chapter", you should use just n="4" 
(and equally generate the " (3)" in your stylesheet). If it means "this 
is chapter 4 according to me and chapter 3 according to Denkin, 
Watersmith and Vole's 1892 edition, then you should be bunging in some 
<mileStone>s

Another school of thought is to say if it matters that much to you, bung 
it into the <head>, possibly separating it off as a <label>

<head>4 (3) Alternatives to Litigation</head>

<head><label>4 (3)</label> Alternatives to Litigation</head>

both work for me.

Similar issues are to be found in the discussion of numbered list items, 
if I remember rightly.