Vocab term selection

[Tony Linde]

(topic renamed as it is more than just solar terms)
 
I was heartened to learn from Andrea’s previous post that:
 
> The point of the draft under discussion is not to include all possible
> astronomical terms in the SV, but to be able to express any possible
> astronomical term, locally defined, in terms of standard SV tokens (or
> words, as we call them in UCD-ish).
 
and I assumed from this that: a) where astronomers use two or more terms to
mean the same thing, we would choose one for the SV, and b) any new concept
would only get its own term if it cannot already be conveyed by a
combination of existing terms (or until the term becomes commonplace on its
own).
 
The above approach will help in DAL/DM to allow for the labelling of items
with the SV ‘normalised’ term and the lookup of the human-worded definition
of those terms. 
 
As regards searching however, it will only make easier guided searching, ie
that where the user selects (or types if they’ve a good memory) terms from
the SV to narrow some search. What it will not do is make easier the type of
search where the user simply enters the set of terms that they are used to
using in the expectation that the application will understand them.
 
Is this a problem?
 
T.
 
From: owner-semantics at eso.org [mailto:owner-semantics at eso.org] On Behalf Of
Frederic V. Hessman
Sent: 19 September 2007 16:20
To: semantics at ivoa.net
Subject: Solar vocabularies
 
Since AstroGrid is one of the few groups (only one?) with an active solar 
(and STP) contingent, I'll 'volunteer' Elizabeth Auden (supported by Silvia
Dalla) to provide the solar side of the SV. To forestall any concerns about
this possibly delaying the process, I would think the solar terminology will
primarily sit on its own tree or major branch of other trees. And I think it
is important that solar VO apps do not fall behind dark-side ones.  
 
This nicely raises a fundamental question about how the WG plans on
approaching the selection of SV tokens (assuming that there is a general
acceptance of the idea of SOME vocabulary), something that has already
appeared slightly different forms in the list: do we simply want a list of
all possible interesting words, assuming that the VO clients and apps will
simply choose whatever word is appropriate, or do we want to define a
vocabular basis of words which users and apps are expected to stick together
in some hopefully simple fashion.
 
Example: do we want to propagate "sunspot" or do we what to propagate
"starpot" and expect that the solar types will - somehow - be able to add on
some more information that the "starspot" is on the Sun?  Nowday, it's
amazing how much of early solar terminology is being applied to other stars,
so we don't need two or more names for the same thing.  This may not be the
best example, but one which immediately popped into my head when the Sun was
mentioned.
 
Our original proposal tried to keep the total number of tokens as small as
possible by encouraging some form of concatenation (whether trivial ucd-like
or fancy OWL-like), a goal I'd like to see kept in the forefront.
 
Rick
 
 
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Dr. Frederic V. Hessman     Hessman at Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE
Institut für Astrophysik          Tel.  +49-551-39-5052
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1         Fax +49-551-39-5043
37077 Goettingen                 Room F04-133
http://www.Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.de/~hessman
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