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SASDigitalHumanitiesTraining / TextEncoding

Text Encoding for Ancient and Modern Literature, Languages and History
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Question about TEI Core Modeling Slides "Numbers and Measures" #23

Closed boers68 closed 2 years ago

boers68 commented 2 years ago

I don't know whether this is a coding question or a math question! This is from the slides about numbers and measures in the Core Modeling presentation. Why are the numbers "804672" and "160934" different in the example below, since the unit measures in both sections are miles? Or, if they are meant to refer to one another, why are they not <measureGrp> ?

` But I would walk

500 miles

`

` Just to be the man who walks

a thousand miles

`

Thanks, Greta

cmohge1 commented 2 years ago

Great question--the @unit="m" attribute is normalising values in meters (although the second @quantity value is a typo--it should be 1609344!). In any case, the idea is that you can normalise alternate forms of written measurements in the TEI <measure> elements. This becomes very important when dealing with archaic sources.

boers68 commented 2 years ago

Ahh! That makes sense! It's a math question after all. I had wondered whether it was some kind of calibration for the measurement of miles, but then I couldn't figure out why 500 (804672) was less than a 1000 (160934). Thank you!.