On Nov 9, 2005, at 1:23 AM, Andrea Preite Martinez wrote:
>> With the recent talk about the UCD1+ list not conforming to the
>> UCD specification, I am prompted to wonder whether anyone is
>> working on a UCD verifier - or perhaps one already exists?
>
> Yes, try the validate tool at
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/UCD/tools.htx
Thanks. Other pointed me to that, too.
The rules and meta-rules for UCD building imply that each UCD fills a niche in a larger semantic ecology. Each new UCD causes a potential challenge to all previously declared UCDs or lists or namespaces of same.
The tool I was suggesting would not only test a single proposed UCD against the syntactical rules, but also test a list of same (e.g., representing a namespace) against the rules for building lists of UCDs. I suspect that the notion that two namespaces cannot contain identical UCDs (or more stringently, was it identical "words"?) will fall by the wayside, but if not, it would prove useful - almost mandatory - to have a tool to vet two lists against each other, or for instance, a newly proposed list against all previously registered namespaces.
Which is to say that the choice of rules for assembling lists of UCDs is not a completely free design parameter.
Rob Seaman
NOAO
Received on 2005-11-09Z13:56:10