content, format, ctype, or xtype ?

[Arnold Rots]

I'm not sure I understand the present discussion.
I think it is about the coordinate metadata of columns in a VOTable.
But I was under the distinct impression that we had solved that
through a compromising process to attach those metadata by means of
utypes. So, I would have expecetd these columns to be complemented by
such utypes, to provide a complete desciption.
However, this discussion sounds like designing a different
mechanism. Why complicate matters by doing the same thing in two
different ways?

  - Arnold

Francois Ochsenbein wrote:
> 
> Yes it has to do with a semantic content of the field, but
> the 'utype' that I tried to propose several times does not
> seem to be satisfactory to TAP . There are 2 cases currently
> "iso8601" and "stc-s" to specify time stamps and STC expression.
> 
> Personnally I still would prefer the 'utype' which has the
> advantage of being more accurate in its definition, and is
> versionable...
> 
> -- Francois
> 
> >
> >Hi Francois -
> >
> >It would help to have a list of common "data representations" which
> >we are trying to characterize with this attribute.  I originally
> >thought it was the numerical format, but it now sounds like it may be a
> >broader concept having to do with the semantic content of the field.
> >If we just list all the currently forseen values, perhaps we can
> >identify the concept.  What is "x"?.
> >
> > 	- Doug
> >
> >
> >On Sun, 3 May 2009, Francois Ochsenbein wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Hi Pat, Mark, Doug,
> >>
> >> I would like to come to a final wording for the new attribute
> >> in VOTable which would specify the data representation of
> >> columns having a special meaning like STC-S or time. None of
> >> the various propositions (encoding, format, content, ctype)
> >> got real support; it seems that 'content' was felt as a
> >> bit more acceptable than the other terms. A last proposal
> >> could be 'xtype' (some condensed way of "expression type")
> >> would that be acceptable for tap ?
> >>
> >> See you soon,
> >> Francois
> >>
> 
> =======================================================================
> Francois Ochsenbein    ------   Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg
>    11, rue de l'Universite 67000 STRASBOURG  Phone: +33-(0)390 24 24 29
> Email: francois at astro.u-strasbg.fr (France)    Fax: +33-(0)390 24 24 17
> =======================================================================
> 
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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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