[tei-council] new attribute @rational on num - ID: 2673045

[David Sewell]

Allowing num/@rational as a complement to num/@value is a simple 
solution to the problem that would meet many people's needs, but I don't 
see it as an elegant general-case solution to the problem of associating 
the textual content of <num> with an unambiguous and/or processable 
value. Just to take one of the most obvious examples,

   <p>Is it true that some fundamentalists wanted to define
     <num>pi</num> as equal to <num>3</num>?</p>

You can't express pi with either @value or @rational. It would probably 
be better for us to defer to a more systematic language like MathML if 
people need to express complex numeric values, probably by means of a 
referring attribute. Maybe add <num> to att.declaring so one could point 
to a chunk of MathML in the header...

Anyway, I wouldn't object to adding @rational as proposed by Gaby. I 
don't think the @value/@valuetype solution will work as complex values 
will be hard to express as character data.

David

-- 
David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager
ROTUNDA, The University of Virginia Press
PO Box 801079, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4318 USA
Courier: 310 Old Ivy Way, Suite 302, Charlottesville VA 22903
Email: dsewell at virginia.edu   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
Web: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/