On Jul 25, 2006, at 7:56 AM, Nausicaa Delmotte wrote:
> I would say that the more examples we give in the reference UCD
> document,
> the easiest it is for a user to be convinced that the correct UCD
> was assigned.
If the logic behind UCDs may only be correctly grasped by example, UCDs might just as well be opaque tokens assigned randomly. It seems to me that the whole point of the exercise is to illuminate (at least partially) the intrinsic structure that underlies astronomical nomenclature. Given a categorized value, what are the rules for constructing quantities contingent on that value? Given a complex UCD expression, how does one parse it without consulting documentation such as a master list?
Users need to understand other people's UCDs - they may also need to assign their own. UCD fluency won't be established through better documentation (not that this hurts), but rather must be built into the linguistic structure of the "language".
Rob Seaman
NOAO
Received on 2006-07-25Z17:37:18