[Om3] strict/pragmatic for cn.

[Professor James Davenport]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008, Michael Kohlhase wrote:
> Stephen Watt wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:26 AM, David Carlisle <davidc at nag.co.uk> wrote:
> >> This is true, but this more than anything else in OM shows its
> >> origins in computational numeric systems at a particular point in time.
Um - I think this is a slight rewriting of history: "God made the 
integers, all else is the work of man" (in this case, Kahan et al.). 
Integers, and fractions thereof, are the fundamental objects: OMF exist to 
esnure that the work of man is not polluted further by OpenMath. In my 
view, the correct translation of 1.5 into OpenMath is 
<OMA> <OMS name="divide" cd="arth1"/> <OMI>15</OMI> <OMI>10</OMI></OMA>.
See the discussion in Stratford/Davenport {MKM 2008) on OMFs in unit 
conversion.
> >> I think in the "K-12-14" range that we claim MathML targets saying that
> >> IEEE double is primitive but real numbers are not really can't work.
I agree - I wouldn't emphasise, or even use, OMF in K-12.
> >> Even in the field of numerical computing it's not so clear that double
> >> has the status that it once had (NAG keeps thinking about quad prec for
> >> example)
But if we wanted to represent man-made quads, we should augment OMF.
James