[tcs-lc] nameObjects, spellings, vernaculars, etc

[Sally Hinchcliffe]

Gregor wrote:
> > I am sorry that I am at the moment not able to fully express that
> > as an TCS
> > example, perhaps someone may help. I assumed that for a concept
> > there would be
> > a recommended label (recommended by the provider, in the absence
> > of a code of
> > taxon-concept suffixes there cannot be a canonical form) as part
> > of the concept
> > object. Is there not such a label?
> 
and Rich responded:
> I'm not sure.  Several times I have asked the question whether the original
> "NameSimple" element of TCS was intended as a "verbatim" label (i.e.,
> exactly how the AccordingTo author spelled it), or as some sort of
> corrected/recommended/concatenated [from canonical bits] name; not
> necessarily how the AccordingTo Author spelled it. So far, I don't think
> anyone has answered.
>
>From my memory of Christchurch, we agreed that the Simple name form 
(which came under a number of different labels) would be a canonical 
form, with space given elsewhere for the the author's own particular 
and correctable spelling of it. 
I would hope that the TCS doesn't need an extra simple name element 
of its own, or if it does that it shouldn't be different from the LC 
one. 
If the simple name form is canonical it should be reproducible - i.e. 
given the same protologue & the same knowledge of latin & the code, 
two separate researchers should be able to come up with the same set 
of letters to represent it. The 'as published' name should also be 
reproducible. 

As far as I am concerned, all other orthographic variants that might 
have been published elsewhere won't be going into IPNI. (apart, of 
course, from IPNI's own scanning errors, which we will be correcting 
as we find them). If we want to allow for users entering typos 
(whether their own or somebody else's) into the search term, we'll 
use fuzzy searching (like Google's 'did you mean') which should catch 
all possible typos not just those that have been published.

Of course if anyone else wanted to do the (sometimes considerable) 
research involved  in working out that one orthographic variant was 
actually the same as this other orthographic variant then that is 
useful information and it should probably be stored somewhere (don't 
uBio have an interest in this?) But isn't it the case that all of 
these orthographic variants must have appeared in a publication 
somewhere (otherwise why bring them up?) and so the mapping must 
always be 'Migenus myspecies L. sec. R.Pyle, Ladies Home Journal 
2005' = 'Mygenus myspecies L. sec Linnaeus Species Plantarum 1753' - 
in which case we are mapping concepts to concepts are we not? Because 
name objects in themselves don't have a publication other than the 
original protologue that is recorded in the Original Taxon Concept.

My 2p worth. This discussion is rapidly getting over my head so if 
I've opened  a whole can of worms that someone else had previously 
closed, please just shout me down

Sally
*** Sally Hinchcliffe
*** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
*** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708
*** S.Hinchcliffe at rbgkew.org.uk