[tcs-lc] New Version of TCS announced

[Roger Hyam]

Hi Rich,

>I understand that Nominal concepts still exist in v0952 -- but my point was
>that I still think names data are better represented as attributes of
>nominal concept instances, than as disconnected top-level objects.  I don't
>think I will have the time to provide a polished alternative schema
>representing what I have in mind, so I'll probably just set my sights on TCS
>v2.0...
>
There are no doubt many ways of marking up taxonomic data. The TCS is 
'a' way of doing it not 'the only' way of doing it. I think it is fair 
to assume that it is not the 'best' way of doing it. Somewhere out there 
in the spaces between peoples heads there is surely a better way of 
doing it waiting to be discovered, written down, documented, tested and 
deployed.

What I think (and this is a personal opinion) is that we are in the 
business of getting a product to market here. We need something that is 
good enough to do the job at hand. Once we are all exchanging data using 
version 1 then we will really understand what we want from version 2.

Bearing this in mind what we really need is feedback along the lines of:

 "TCS 0.95.2 is no good because I can't express X with it"

This can be answered with:

1) "Yes you can - this is how you do it (and we have added it to the 
documentation)"

2) "Oops! - we better change the schema to accommodate it"

3) "Hmm - after thought and discussion we think this is beyond the scope 
of the schema and is better dealt with somewhere else (ABCD, TaXMLit etc)"

So you don't need to come up with a competing schema you just need to 
come up with real world examples of what can't be expressed using 0.95.2 
and we will do one of the three things above. If there are enough of 
number 2 then we may end up creating the schema you have in mind anyhow!

All the best,

Roger


-- 

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 Roger Hyam
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