[Tcs-lc] Taxonomic order anyone?

[Gregor Hagedorn]

> Is there nothing in the UBIF metadata stuff that could indicate a 
> sort order? For instance if IPNI presents data in any order at all, 
> it would be alphabetical. Or it might be unordered, and I'd hate for 
> anyone to read into that some sort of taxonomic order. Or we might 
> want to order names in the order they were published ... so the 
> attribute for the data set as a whole could be something like: 
> unordered, alphabetically by name, taxonomic order, date order etc. 
> etc.  - would we be able to come up with an exhaustive list?

It is possible to add such an attribute to all UBIF collections to indicate 
whether order is semantic ("seq"), not but identity is expressed ("set") or 
neither ("bag"). I am less sure about additionally describing the background of 
the ordering, an exhaustive list for that seems not possible to me.

Is that need big enough? Who endorses it? I ask this because the usual reaction 
to UBIF or SDD is: there is too much there, it must be much simpler and 
concentrate on the essentials!


Gregor----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203