concept representation/displaying language?

Fri Jun 5 07:57:29 PDT 2009

Hi Francois

I think that your suggestions are really creative and all of them are 
quite useful (also the idea by Mark is)

(at the end of this long and messy mail I give an example of the way I'm 
doing it now so please, if you are interested try to reach the end of the 
mail ;)

I find some difficulties associated to each of them, though.

> A) either the name (name="\frac{\alpha}{\gamma}^2" is quite
>   possible);

> B) or embed in the <DESCRIPTION>, (e.g.
>   <DESCRIPTION>[latex_label=$\frac{\alpha}{\gamma}^2$]
>      Commputed value of...
>   </DESCRIPTION>

Having such an expression as a PARAM name sounds weird (I guess that some 
applications can be using the param names to store values or things like 
that). Having it in the description is, like you say, a convention. It 
means that people shold be aware of it and not showing the latex_label 
together with the description.

> C) or VOTable has to define another element or attribute to
>   convey this info; if such details would have to be added,
>   I would prefer to define of a new element like <TITLE>
>   or <LABEL> or <CAPTION> which could exist in addition to
>   (or as a complement to) <DESCRIPTION>, something which
>   could look like
>      <LABEL context="latex">\frac{\alpha}{\gamma}^2</LABEL>

This third option (offering a better structured way to do it) would imply 
adding something new to the VOTable specification (which people will be 
reluctact to, although I think that, with time, some other additions will 
be done)

The problem about all of this is that, the same way that I would like to 
have this option for the param or field name I would also like to have it 
for the description (sometimes it is even more important because it is in 
the description where it is most likely to have, for instance, 
mathematical formulae).

In that case:

solution (A) doesn't work.

Solution (B) would imply adding a convention to include a funny structure 
inside the <description> element so that you can give the formatting both 
for the param label and its description (It would fit my intentions and 
even other posibilities, but I don't know if it is a solution, it looks 
more like a patch; at least unless we ended up a new "description element 
content language" or something like that).

Option (C) would be perfect if the <LABEL> element could be a child both 
of a <PARAM> and <DESCRIPTION> or being able to have different labels for 
the same param... It seems a big change in votable (although useful).

(and, in any case, this means adding information to the votable, making it 
heavier to download and maybe not useful at all for some users/clients 
that will download more information without needing it)

I think that the nicest way for something like this would be 
to do something similar to what is done for ontologies, vocabularies, 
namespaces and so. I'm not an expert on those things, so please correct me 
where I'm wrong.

I would have some xfd (Xml Formatting Definition or whatever, I've just 
invented the term) document following a TBD specification. In that 
document I would have:

or something similar (I just want to suggest the main idea)

And, in the votable tag I would add the address of this document in the 
usual fashion, somethinkg like <votable xfd:http:...> (or even a INFO 
element could be given in the votable telling the address of this 
document?)

In that way, somebody can download the simple votable and, if he is 
interested in displaying, he can download the xfd document and do the 
matching. I don't know if the matching should be done by the parameter 
name or by some utype or whatever (how is it done in SKOS vocabularies and 
those things? I actually think that this thing that I'm asking for could 
be an addition to vocabularies: not only giving "definitions" and 
relations, but only suggesting the correct displaying in several contexts)

I can show the "solution" that I'm using right now for one case that I'm 
interested in (I dont find it to be the more elegant posibility, is just 
an easy way to do it).

Take this VOTable:
http://svo.laeff.inta.es/theory/astrosism/s3p.php
(it contains the metadata for some astrosismology model)

it includes this:
<PARAM name="concepts" 
value="http://svo.laeff.inta.es/theory/astrosism/concepts.php"/>

Given that my applications are the only ones accesing the service (by now) 
I know that this parameter means that in that document (the one pointed 
by the url) I can find information on how to display each concept).

You can download that document (another votable) and use the information 
in it.

I just would like to do such a thing in a more elegant way (or a more 
standard way) if possible.

Sorry for the long and messy mail (I hope it is readable)

Carlos

  > I don't think the 'xtype' (or 'xdatatype', to be finalized)
> is meant for this kind of info -- I would rather suggest
> the following possibilities:
>
> A) either the name (name="\frac{\alpha}{\gamma}^2" is quite
>   possible);
>
> B) or embed in the <DESCRIPTION>, (e.g.
>   <DESCRIPTION>[latex_label=$\frac{\alpha}{\gamma}^2$]
>      Commputed value of...
>   </DESCRIPTION>
>
> C) or VOTable has to define another element or attribute to
>   convey this info; if such details would have to be added,
>   I would prefer to define of a new element like <TITLE>
>   or <LABEL> or <CAPTION> which could exist in addition to
>   (or as a complement to) <DESCRIPTION>, something which
>   could look like
>      <LABEL context="latex">\frac{\alpha}{\gamma}^2</LABEL>
>
> Pros and cons:
> A) is readily available, but may be in conflict with VOTable
>   usage in some contexts (e.g. results of cone search)
> B) is also readily available; but it is just a convention
>   which can't be enforced, and requires some extra parsing
>   from applications to extract this information
> C) requires a modification of the VOTable schema -- it could
>   be done if a strong requirement is expressed in the
>   immediate future...
>
> Any other comment / suggestion ?
>
> Cheers, 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
> =======================================================================
>