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

[Lou Burnard]

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Lou Burnard wrote:
>> 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. 
> that's ducking the issue. if the stylesheet always generates it, what is 
> @n for at all?
> it's traditionally been used to record the number, no? you mean @n should
> be "4.3"?
> 
> the Guidelines have a helpful example of @n:
> 
> <exemplum>
>        <egXML xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/Examples"/>
>      </exemplum>
> 


The discussion at #STGA says:

<p>The <att>n</att> attribute allows identifying information (e.g.
chapter numbers, etc.) to be encoded even if it would not be a legal
<att>xml:id</att> value.  Its value may be any string of characters;
typically it is a number or other similar enumerator or label.

So the letter of the law is on your side. James's concerns about 
possible misuse are appropriate however: we really don't want to see 
things like

<item n="This is an interesting item">

or

<p n="about these guidelines">

-- that's what <label> is for.