[tcs-lc] Have your cake and eat it?

Roger Hyam roger at hyam.net
Wed Mar 16 04:02:45 PST 2005


Hi Everyone,

A solution to the names embedded vs names as top level elements has 
occurred to me that will require little alteration to the TCS as 
proposed (more or less 0.90b as proposed by Napier but with a few 
changes).  Please read all the points before responding to the first 
ones as they are related!

1) LC is embedded within a TaxonConcept element but the relationship 
stuff is moved to TCS.

2) Various other bits are rationalised as agreed in the notes that were 
circulated earlier (rank, kingdom moved etc).

3) Rename the TaxonConcepts element to Taxa.

4) Rename the TaxonConcept element to Taxon

5) The attributes in the TaxonConcept element should be changed (and we 
may need to discuss this). What I have been thinking is we need a flag like

nomenclature="declarative" - meaning the name data in this taxon 
definition is meant to be 'authoritive' and correct. If you want to 
communicate nomenclatural data specifically you can flag your taxon like 
this.

nomenclature="nondeclarative" - the default setting. System presumes you 
are talking about a taxon concept and not making declarative statements 
about nomenclature.

Thus if you want to have names as top level you can just tag your Taxon 
object as being a nomenclatural one but if you don't know what you are 
doing we presume you are talking about a taxon concept and are probably 
trying to join it to things on the basis of a name. Thus you can have 
your cake and eat it. Nomenclators can explicitly talk about names 
whilst 'other' users talk about taxa.

This is close to the type="original" that is schema but I think 
importantly different in that it allows people to explicitly exchange 
data about nomenclature rather than the "original _concept_" which is 
something different.

My current thought is that most of the confusion around the 
names/concepts (well my confusion anyhow)  may be generated around the 
different types of taxon concepts. Namely nominal/original/revision. 
There has certainly been discussion on this list where people have had 
different views of what a Nominal concept is for instance. I wonder 
whether we could do away with these distinctions all together? They are 
all implied by the data anyway. The original concept is just according 
to the original publication, the nominal is according to null and the 
revision concept is everything else.

Would be grateful for peoples thoughts.

Roger




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