How to avoid abbreviation collision in Astronomy

[Alasdair J G Gray]

Frederic V. Hessman wrote:
>> 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.
Abbreviations can/should be used in user interfaces, however, they 
should only be alternate labels in the vocabularies developed. The 
preferred label should be the full, expanded, term. This will reduce the 
chances of collisions.

When sharing concepts between applications, the URI of the concept 
should be used. This will ensure that both applications know which 
concept is being used. Again, the user interfaces of the applications 
can use the abbreviated form which would be an alternate label for the 
concept. In fact, the applications should *not *display the URI as the 
main form of interaction with the user.

Alasdair

-- 
Dr Alasdair J G Gray
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~agray/

Explicator project 
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