[tei-council] hands=

[Arianna Ciula]

Lou Burnard wrote:
> a) remove the possibility of saying "many" from the description. If 
> people can't say how many hands there are, they should either not supply 
> this attribute at all, or use some coded value like 999 to indicate that 
> there is more than one

This is not good. It doesn't fit the purpose of the hands description, 
since indeed you may not be able to identify different hands but want to 
record that there are different hands.

> b) redefine the datatype as data.word so that people can say 
> hands="lots" or hands="plenty" or indeed hands="strawberryJam"

No good either, because we find ourselves on the other side of the 
spectrum where it isn't possible to e precise if needed.

> c) invent a new datatype using a fiendishly ingenious pattern which 
> matches either a string of digits or the string "many" but nothing else. 
> Then we'll probably find other cases where we want to use it.

I lean towards this solution, but agree with Sebastian that hard coring 
'many' may not be acceptable in all cases (e.g. is possibly between 3 
and 4 hands many?).

Arianna
> 
> 
> I have a preference but I won't state it yet (hint: it's not (b))
> 
> 
> 
> Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>> Matthew James Driscoll wrote:
>>> According to the guidelines, the value of @hands on <handDesc> should 
>>> be "A whole number, or the string "many"", but its data type is 
>>> data.count and the string "many" produces an error message.
>> definitely an error in the spec which we should correct one way or 
>> another.
>>>  It is, however, absolutely necessary to be to be able to say that 
>>> the number of hands is a unspecified but greater than 3-4-5, i.e. 
>>> "many". What to do?
>>>   
>> I fear I must defer to m'learned colleague with the gammy knee. I don't
>> see an obvious way out.
>>
> 
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-- 
Dr Arianna Ciula
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