[tei-council] Feature request 1933198: 'precision'

Gabriel Bodard gabriel.bodard at kcl.ac.uk
Thu Apr 16 13:10:42 EDT 2009


Dear Tim,

Thanks for further comments. See my (brief) responses below...

Tim Finney a écrit :
>> @min/@max vs. @atLeast/@atMost
> They sure sound like synonyms to me. However, I defer to the Council's
> greater wisdom. This is bound to become a point of confusion in the
> future. Would someone be able to use a mix such as @atLeast and @max in
> the same precision element? 

No, that would make no sense (I agree it's confusing). These attributes 
are all borrowed from att.dimensions (see 
http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/ref-att.dimensions.html 
for a better explanation than I gave). The two pairs of attributes would 
probably not ever be used in the same element. (Think of the difference 
between a dateRange--e.g. a reign or lifetime--and a span of possible 
dates for a single event.)

> I see that @assertedValue would be implied by the number pointed to by
> the precision element. If the precision element is adopted (I hope it
> is) then the guidelines should make this point explicit.

Yes, we must. Thanks for highlighting that.

> When I come across something like "c. 300 CE" in a book, all I know is
> that whoever proposed that date wasn't sure of its exact value. Short of
> talking to the author, I often have no idea of the precision he or she
> might have had in mind (+/- 50? +/- 100?). That is why I think that
> degree="unknown" will sometimes be required when encoding a circa date.

Okay, but in the simple case where all you're saying is "circa", I would 
say that what you're saying is @precision='low'. That's suffiently 
"unknown" a degree of imprecision, I should think. The important 
distinction that a lot of people don't immediately grasp, is the 
difference between saying:

c. 300 CE
and
300 CE (?)

The former means "definitely some time around 300" (but doesn't specify 
whether that means 295-305 or 250-350), whereas the latter means "I 
think in the year 300 (exactly), but I could be wrong and it's an 
entirely different date". In the first case precision is low, in the 
second case certainty is. (That may be a cleaner distinction of 
vocabulary than people use in the real world, but that's the distinction 
understood in the TEI attribute names.)

Cheers,

Gabby


-- 
Dr Gabriel BODARD
(Epigrapher & Digital Classicist)

Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL
Email: gabriel.bodard at kcl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388
Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980

http://www.digitalclassicist.org/
http://www.currentepigraphy.org/


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