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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Subject: Re: output of enumeration types
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Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 14:56:42 +0200
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Date: 2005-04-19T14:56:42+02:00
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On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:26:25 +0100, Marius Amado Alves wrote:

>>> ... 'I'
>>> is not a digit. It can represent or not a decimal position depending 
>>> on the
>>> context. For example in 'XIII', the "digits" are 'X' and 'III'.
> 
> This is rubbish. There are no "decimal positions" in Roman numbers. If 
> there were, XIII = 103, not 13, IV = 15, not 4.

Positions are counted in digits /= characters! Otherwise "forty five" would
be 40005 (:-))

No, actually Roman system is almost decimal positional, I am using this in
my software. Decimal digits are:

0=<empty>
1=a,
2=aa,
3=aaa,
4=ab,
5=b,
6=ba,
7=baa,
8=baaa,
9=ac 

Characters in the triplet a, b, c change their spelling with the position:

   a b c -->
1x I V X,
10x X L C,
100x C D M
1000x M - -

Only absence of a non-empty digit for 0 prevented Romans from noticing that
there is no any need in changing spelling according to the position.

> "Digit" does not necessarily convey position. It is a notion, not some 
> engineering standard. It is OK to call 'X', 'I', "Roman digits." 
> However the canonical name is "characters," I think.
> 
> And, Dmitry, larger numbers than 3999 could be written: a slash over 
> the character multiplies by 1000. A job for Unicode I guess...

Wasn't it a medieval vulgarization?

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de