New issue?: vocabulary maintenance [vocabset-5]

[Norman Gray]

Rick, hello.

On 2008 Feb 7, at 07:51, Frederic V. Hessman wrote:

> There's a very simple reason why there needs to be a SKOS-ified  
> version of UCD:  we desperately need to be able to link vocabulary  
> words to UCD tokens.  If we can't do this, then we'll need to  
> replace all that UCD is and put an equivalent in a different  
> vocabulary (e.g. IVOAT), which sounds like a pretty stupid thing to  
> do.

Is there a use-case that should go in the document?  It appears to me  
that UCDs already have a place -- and a special attribute in the  
VOTable spec, no less -- so that it's not clear to me what SKOSifying  
them would add.  I'm not denying that this scenario exists, but it's  
one which I at least haven't thought of (and probably should have),  
and which I'm not picking up from your description here.

>> 1. Publish just the IAU-93, but with a prominent notice saying we  
>> know it's out of date, and this is just an exercise (the  
>> disadvantage is that this starts to look redundant, or  
>> alternatively that the fact that `everyone knows it's out of date'  
>> might partly undermine the standard).
>
> Even if it is much less useful than it should be, it's not "out-of- 
> date", if only because it still is the international standard, much  
> more than AOIM.

True -- at the very least we'd have to be careful about the language  
used here.

> The present IVOA-T IS a minimally updated IAU-93, but "minimally  
> updated" doesn't simply mean we've added a few missing words.  There  
> is some concern that a discussion of the merits of publishing an  
> IVOA-T will distract from the expected easy acceptance of the basic  
> vocabulary proposal.   On the other hand, if we tell our colleagues  
> "be fruitful and let vocabularies multiply in the VO" but then say  
> that the only ones available at first, A&A, AOIM, and IAU-93, aren't  
> really enough to cover the basics, then they'll rightly say "why  
> bother" or simply use IAU-93 after all (like Rob).

and...

>> I suggest that we include in the Vocabulary standard document the  
>> three vocabularies A&A, AOIM, and either IAU-93 or IAU-93/IVOA-T,  
>> depending on how we resolve this.
>>
> This is a good point:  the vocabularies we discuss at more length in  
> the standards document don't have to be the same ones which the IVOA  
> publishes.  Still, if we can produce several useful vocabularies  
> (each having it's own particular use) and we're not stepping on  
> anybodies semantic toes, why can't we simply produce a nice batch of  
> vocabularies to start out with?

Are you, then, moving towards the position that the IVOA-T shouldn't  
be included in this vocabularies standard, but should be the subject  
of a parallel standardisation effort?

I'm not opposed to that in principle, but it slightly worries me,  
since I think that publication of an updated IAU-93 (=IVOA-T) would be  
important for the vocabularies effort, and it would be unfortunate if  
they were published too far apart from each other.

>> I don't know what to do with the constellation vocabulary.  On the  
>> one hand, it's simple; on the other, 4 is 33% more than 3....
>
> Exactly what we now have:  it is a usable if limited vocabulary  
> derived for didactic purposes, being MUCH simpler than all the rest  
> we're taking about.

Fair enough.  No objections from me.  Does anyone else feel strongly  
about Rick's constellation vocabulary being in the document?

See also <http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/VocabulariesWorkingArea 
 >.

> No, because this should be the long-term place for all IVOA- 
> supported/mirrored vocabularies.  This demands a long-term  
> commitment to a simple URI not unlike http://www.ivoa.net/xml or http://www.ivoa.net/Documents 
> .


I think this overlaps with the issue of versioning.  I'll mail Bruno.

See you,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester