Standards for presentation of numerical data for usability..

Scripsit David E. Ross:

[ A fullquote, always a useful signal... ]

> The original message from Procida in this thread referred to
>> formatting and presentation of numbers in web pages
> Procida is authoring a Web page using HTML. This is most clearly
> on-topic in this news group.

No it is not, any more than other matters of writing style that relate to
all kinds of text and have nothing specific to do with HTML.

Just because someone is authoring a Web page using HTML doesn't mean that
anything he might ask for doing that is on-topic here. If you wonder whether
you should write "color" or "colour", it's not an HTML question just because
you would write it in an HTML document (or an InDesign question just because
you are using InDesign, etc.).

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

>
> And some languages have varying practices. But does this matter? Almost
> all browsers (and search engines) ignore language markup.

Jaws use it.
If you don't specify the language or lie about it, you may end up hearing
a voice with an awful accent.

--
You can contact me at <tabkanDELETETHISnaz.DeleteThis@yahoDELETETHATo.fr>

In message <i7%ui.205157$046.31555@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>, Jukka K.
Korpela <jkorpela DeleteThis @cs.tut.fi> writes

>In a more ideal world, we could use markup that indicates whether a
>sequence of digits (possibly with interspersed punctuation) is a
>mathematical number or a code-like notation (normally read digit by
>digit). But HTML has nothing like that.

CSS does, though:

speak: spell-out;

speak-numeral: digits;

See:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/aural.html#speaking-props>
and:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/aural.html#speech-props>

respectively. These are recognised by Opera, at least, and there's a
small test suite at:

<http://www.pigsonthewing.org.uk/opera.htm>

should anyone wish to try it.

[apologies for the belated response]

--
Andy Mabbett
* Say "NO!" to compulsory ID Cards: <http://www.no2id.net/>
* Free Our Data: <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>
* Are you using Microformats, yet: <http://microformats.org/> ?

Andy Mabbett <usenet200309 DeleteThis @pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:

> >In a more ideal world, we could use markup that indicates whether a
> >sequence of digits (possibly with interspersed punctuation) is a
> >mathematical number or a code-like notation (normally read digit by
> >digit). But HTML has nothing like that.
>
> CSS does, though:
>
>
> speak-numeral: digits;

This property controls how numerals are spoken. Values have the
following meanings:

digits
Speak the numeral as individual digits. Thus, "237" is spoken "Two Three
Seven".
continuous
Speak the numeral as a full number. Thus, "237" is spoken "Two hundred
thirty seven". Word representations are language-dependent.

Any idea how 345,676 would be rendered? "Three hundred forty five, comma
six hundred seventy six", or "three hundred and forty five thousand, six
hundred seventy six"?

Daniele

Andy Mabbett wrote:

> In message <i7%ui.205157$046.31555@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>, Jukka K.
> Korpela <jkorpela.TakeThisOut@cs.tut.fi> writes
>
>> In a more ideal world, we could use markup that indicates whether a
>> sequence of digits (possibly with interspersed punctuation) is a
>> mathematical number or a code-like notation (normally read digit by
>> digit). But HTML has nothing like that.
>
> CSS does, though:
>

Having to put semantic in CSS proves that it lacks to HTML.
Whether a sequence of digits is a number or not, is part of the structure
of the document, not of its presentation.


> speak: spell-out;
>
> speak-numeral: digits;
>

Unfortunately, speak: spell-out; doesn't PROVE that the sequence of digits
is logically not a number. I can think that someone could read the
sequence of digits of a very big number. CSS gives guidelines in an
imperative form. HTML is purely declarative. It declares the structure of
the document. CSS cannot replace HTML that easily.

If HTML is a relatively simple semantic language, HTML + parts of CSS is
MUCH more complex.

An element type NUMBER in HTML would surely be useful.

--
You can contact me at <tabkanDELETETHISnaz.TakeThisOut@yahoDELETETHATo.fr>

Scripsit D.M. Procida:

> Any idea how 345,676 would be rendered? "Three hundred forty five,
> comma six hundred seventy six", or "three hundred and forty five
> thousand, six hundred seventy six"?

My guess is that speech rendering software typically has settings that
control this. They don't pay attention to the speak-numeral (or
speak-punctuation) property defined in CSS 2.0; I wonder whether Opera is
the only exception.

The property is sloppily defined in CSS 2.0, and CSS 2.1 drafts (which have
moved aural style sheets from the normative part to an informative
appendix - a poor compromise between promoting them and dropping them) does
not change this at all. To begin with, what is a "numeral"? Is "I" a
numeral? (In "king Charles I", it surely is.) Is "1st" a numeral? Always?
What about "FFFF"? (Think about "The Unicode character with code number FFFF
in hexadecimal".)

We would have similar but less severe problems if we tried to add <number>
markup to HTML, but less serious, since each instance of a number would have
that markup. In the CSS approach, the property applies to all elements, so
an author could say body { speak-numeral: continuous }, leaving it to poor
browsers to decide what to do with Charles I and friends.

In any processing, whether affected by markup or stylesheets or not, that
tries to speak numbers naturally, "345,676" would need to be treated in a
language-specific way, and I don't just mean the names of numbers. In
English, it's an integer. In many other languages, it is a decimal number,
with a comma as the decimal separator.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela DeleteThis @cs.tut.fi> wrote:

> In any processing, whether affected by markup or stylesheets or not, that
> tries to speak numbers naturally, "345,676" would need to be treated in a
> language-specific way, and I don't just mean the names of numbers. In
> English, it's an integer. In many other languages, it is a decimal number,
> with a comma as the decimal separator.

In fact it was just that kind of ambiguity which prompted my original
question: how to present and format numerical data for maximum
comprehension and minimum confusion.

Daniele

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html message <Yp7Gi.222739$ow3.49556@r
eader1.news.saunalahti.fi>, Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:30:10, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkorpela DeleteThis @cs.tut.fi> posted:

> To begin with, what is a "numeral"? Is "I" a numeral? (In "king
>Charles I", it surely is.)

Actually it is an ordinal (and the K needs to be upper case). He was
King Charles the First, not King Charles One.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
For news:borland.*, use their server newsgroups.borland.com ; but first read
Guidelines <URL:http://www.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html> ff. with care.

Scripsit Dr J R Stockton:

>> To begin with, what is a "numeral"? Is "I" a numeral? (In "king
>> Charles I", it surely is.)
>
> Actually it is an ordinal (and the K needs to be upper case). He was
> King Charles the First, not King Charles One.

Ordinal numerals are regarded as numerals in any grammar book I've read, but
admittedly I've read just a dozen or so. Besides, the way we read roman
numbers (sic) in such contexts depends on the language, and not just in
vocabulary; some languages sometimes read them as cardinal numbers.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

In article <T_sGi.223190$FM4.207391@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela DeleteThis @cs.tut.fi> wrote:

> Scripsit Dr J R Stockton:
>
> >> To begin with, what is a "numeral"? Is "I" a numeral? (In "king
> >> Charles I", it surely is.)
> >
> > Actually it is an ordinal (and the K needs to be upper case). He was
> > King Charles the First, not King Charles One.
>
> Ordinal numerals are regarded as numerals in any grammar book I've read, but
> admittedly I've read just a dozen or so. Besides, the way we read roman
> numbers (sic) in such contexts depends on the language, and not just in
> vocabulary; some languages sometimes read them as cardinal numbers.
^^^^

Ah, you mean like Pope John Paul II?