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

[Gabriel Bodard]

Tim Finney a écrit :
> OK. But Murphy's law says if something can be done the wrong way it will
> be done the wrong way, eventually. For this reason, I consider
> synonymous attributes harmful.

Anything can be done the wrong way. If someone misunderstands the 
difference between <gap/> and <space/> and uses the wrong tag, that's 
understandable but just wrong. If someone want to describe a range of 
recorded numbers and uses @atLeast/@atMost instead of min/max, the 
likewise that may be understandable (although I think the guidelines are 
pretty clear--more examples would probably help), but wrong. Only the 
user can prevent that from happening.

> Well, I don't think "c." says much about how precise an asserted dating
> is, so I'll stick with "unknown" for now. Whatever convention is
> adopted, circa dates are so common that the guidelines need to mention
> them explicitly (i.e. give an example encoding), I think.

The way I think about it is that every element has a certainty and every 
number has a precision. Where the tagging is being done by a humanist 
making no statistical claims, there are just two values, 'high' and 
'low'. 'High' is the default--if I have no @precision, it means I think 
the number is pretty precise; if I say the number is "circa" it means 
the precision is lower. This is not statistical accuracy, it's just 
saying whether I'm talking about a specific date or about an approximate 
date (say, the midpoint of a period, for example).

I think we agree, broadly, what the issues are. We're just using 
slightly different words for it. :) And TEI doesn't force you to use one 
set of words or another, it just tries to encourage you to use a 
meaningful vocabulary consistently.

Thanks again: I think this has strengthened the proposal.

Best,

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
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http://www.digitalclassicist.org/
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