[uf-discuss] First version of Currency proposal

[Andy Mabbett]

In message
<abbba2190610111855l5a7f92baw3e346db5a7874855 at mail.gmail.com>, Emiliano
Martinez Luque <martinezluque at gmail.com> writes

>Regarding the Straw man proposal, the symbol class seems to be
>unnecesary since the symbol in most price representations is just a
>convention to define which currency we are speaking of.

Not so. Suppose there is a page with the markup (simplified):

        The book costs $<span class="USD">5.99</span>

and I have a user agent (a Firefox extension, say) which replaces the
dollar value with the value in pounds sterling. I'd get:

        The book costs $£3.50

which is clearly nonsense.

By wrapping the dollar sign in a span (or whatever) with the class
"symbol", the user agent is made aware of its presence, and can hide it
when inserting the sterling value.

Likewise for the "unit" in

        50 <span class-"unit">cents</span>
-- 
Andy Mabbett
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