How to avoid abbreviation collision in Astronomy

[Frederic V. Hessman]

> From: Chenzhou CUI <ccz-at-bao.ac.cn>
> Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:01:51 +0800Just noticed a paper from  
> Astro-ph mailing list. It is the "UCD" abbreviation in the title  
> that calls my attention. After reading the abstract, I know, "UCD"  
> here is completely different from the IVOA UCD.
>
> Should we try to avoid abbreviation collision at least in  
> Astronomy? How to get it?
>
>

No way! - abbreviations by definition will be shorter and hence  
suffer more from collisions.  The purpose of abbreviations in the  
IVOA vocabularies should be to better support users who are liable to  
use them in controled contexts.  If you app gets an abbreviation from  
a user/other app, it can look up what concepts might be implied and  
guess which ones are intended using the context.   This is the main  
reason I've been working on the BT, NT, and RT entries in IVOAT.

Rick

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Dr. Frederic V. Hessman     Hessman at Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE
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