> Is there some technical reason that Rick's example can't become
> "con:event.burst ucd:em.opt"? Let's try to avoid getting lost in the
> semantic underbrush. Please tell me why we can't have separate
> namespaces?
> I've resisted cross-posting. Please let me know if you believe this
> will be more productively addressed elsewhere.
There's no point in pushing the UCD-XML connection. While I don't agree with all of Norman's reasons for his more vehement rejection, he's right when he said
"... just because XSchema is a hammer, it doesn't follow that everything else is a nail."
While I want UCD to be a nail, I certainly don't have the right to make anyone adopt my hammer.
The question then, is, whether something so XML-ish as namespaces will go over very well to those who just want their string. My guess is, NO.
The question for VOEvent, where the use of UCDs would be nice and automatic syntax checking is a gift worth taking (we're parsing using a schema anyway, remember!) but where the present UCD usage is far too limited, is whether to split the usage into two parts, e.g.
<event ucd="em.opt" concept="event.burst"/>
and loose the symantic flexibility of being able to form things like
<event description="em.opt;event.burst"/>
(where the fact that the burst happened in the optical is explicit, unlike the previous example).
Those of you uninterested in VOEvent may think that this discussion is irrelevant to ucd-tech, but at least you should be aware of the desire among some of us to INSURE that the UCDs (or at least the most important ones) conform to the standard, and that expressing them in an XML schema is simply the easiest way - a document which doesn't conform to the standard is garbage because it'll take a human (or additional human-trained software) to deal with it and hence the universality is lost by definition. Again, this problem is undoubtably more acute in VOEvent than in other VO circles, but - hey - that's the way it is.
IMHO this may mean that a parallel UCD-schema may have to be defined
which lives
a strange parallel life to the official list and which you can simply
use..... or ignore.
Rick
Dr. Frederic V. Hessman Hessman-at-Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE Universitaets-Sternwarte Tel. +49-551-39-5052 Geismarlandstr. 11 Fax +49-551-39-5043 37083 Goettingen http://www.uni-sw.gwdg.de/~hessman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------
http://monet.uni-goettingen.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------Received on 2005-06-13Z16:23:17