SV and Thesaurus - decide

[Andrea Preite Martinez]

I think the subject of this discussion is becoming clearer: at the  
beginning I had the impression that we were watching different movies!  
:-)

Movie A is the SV as proposed in the draft paper. It is a (proposed)  
collection of standard, centrally defined and maintained list of  
tokens that allows to express any possible astronomical term, locally  
defined.
It is not specifically meant for humans, but human readable.
There is no associated ontological structure.
A simple basic grammar allows putting together SV tokens to express  
complex concepts or concatenation of concepts.
It is not particularly devised to be a component of the user I/F of a  
searching tool, to help a user to refine his search.

Movie B is intended as *the* standard list of astronomical terms,  
centrally defined and maintained.
It is (also) meant for humans.
Its use within the VO needs to be clarified.
Under discussion is the degree of ontological information to associate  
to the terms of such list.
The starting point to build it can be the old IAU Thesaurus. Much  
longer than Movie A, but size is not a problem.(see note below)

Movie A (the SV) is in the editing phase.
For Movie B (the Thesaurus) we need a script and a producer.
Well, enough with the movie metaphor!

I call for a decision on the SV draft.
After reading it, please post your opinion (possibly by the end of the  
september):

- YES, we can go on discussing/commenting/editing it, with the  
ultimate goal to define an IVOA SV standard.
- NO, let's stop wasting our time on the SV.

There are no other options as far as the SV is concerned.

The two topics are well separated: whichever decision we assume for  
the IVOA SV will not prevent us from deciding to start working on the  
IVOA Thesaurus. Actually, we did start already!!

Andrea

Note:
What could become a size-problem for Movie B is related to the  
definition of the minimum level of semantic difference between two  
terms of the list. By convention a B star is considered different from  
an F star. Is a pulsating B star different from a B star? Only users  
can decide. Has the term pulsating B star ever being used by  
astronomers? Yes: then the term is embarked, No, the term is  
discarded. But also fast pulsating B star has been used. Should we  
embark it? How many level of qualifiers/modifiers should we allow?

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Andrea Preite Martinez                 andrea.preitemartinez at iasf-roma.inaf.it
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