[Tcs-lc] Taxonomic order anyone?

[Richard Pyle]

> I see no way of doing taxonomic order in the current TCS.

If by "order" you mean the non-alphabetical (e.g., pseudo-"phylogenetic")
sequencing of names, then I think this information is not worth capturing in
the TCS schema.  There may be some inference of phylogenetic affiliations of
concepts (sort of) in that kind of information -- but not really.  I think
we should stay strictly with the hierarchical stuff and set-relationships.

> I see no way of doing it. Anyone got any ideas?

How does capturing this information contribute to concept circumscriptions
and their exchange?

> Providing a list of taxa in a herbarium or other collection
> in the order they are arrange (any one a curator?)

That's not the business of TCS.  If someone else wants to build an extension
to TCS for this sort of thing, that's fine.  But I don't see it as a core
function.

> Providing a representation of a monograph as published.

Again, not the business of TCS.  This is something that the taXMLit folks
should worry about.  Ideally, they could use TCS instances for the concepts,
but then sequence them and/or anchor them to well-defined microreferences
(including order/sequence information).

> Providing the layout of a checklist like a field guide.

If associations can be made in a taxonomic/concept way (e.g.,
"superspecies"), then great -- but beyond that, I think there need not be
any encoding of order  among members within a specific set.

> just about any other application you can think of other
> than a web search interface.
> Am I missing something here? Is there a way of doing it?

I think we should focus on exchanging concept-objects and name-objects, and
stay away from the business of order/sort/sequence of those objects within a
set.

I couldn't find the original message where (Roger?) sent this:

> > I am not suggesting we actually do these things with TCS but it should
> > be able to do the list bit of each. Suppose we want to supply a list of
> > birds of the British isles for use in a survey and we want to put them
> > in the same order as in the main field guide. Are you saying TCS should
> > not be able to do it? I would imagine that other schemas will supply
> > descriptive and other detail but surely TCS should be doing the "These
> > taxa in this order and this is what they are called" part.

..but my answer is "Yes -- I am saying that TCS should not be able to encode
any sort of Concept order/sort/sequence for a list of concepts."  This
should be the job of an extension to TCS, if enough people think it is
useful.

I also agree with all of Gregor's points, except:

> However, if you want to express sequence I believe it is
> sufficient to agree
> that the order of elements in the instance document must be
> preserved and is semantic.

For the reasons Gregor follows this statement with, I think we should simply
not even "go there".

Roger followed up with:

> I am not talking about reproducing the field guide here but
> about reproducing the classification presented in the field
> guide.

But when you really look at it carefully, order/sequence/sort is not part of
the classification.  I know that many monographers reproduce lists of names
clustered in some sort of non-alphabetical order in a feeble attempt to
convey some sort of phylogenetic information, but I don't think it's the
kind of infromation that TCS should try to capture in any way. It's neither
a concept circumscription issue, nor a name issue.

> Your recording sheet for an area survey should be in the
> same order as your field guide. It may not contain as many
> taxa because your field guide may cover a larger region it
> would just contain the names you can tick but it should be
> in the correct order. This is the kind of thing people like
> ITIS in North America or NBN in the UK or even Species 2000
> might like to do in the future.

What sort of information, exactly, does the non-alphabetical sort order
encode or represent? If you're talking about being able to produce a
document that presents names in a specific order other than alphabetical,
then that's outside of TCS, in my opinion.

Aloha,
Rich

Aloha,
Rich