VOcabularies

[Rob Seaman]

Hola,

(That is to say "Hello", "Howdy", or "Aloha", while we're discussing  
thesauri.)

For the benefit of the VOEvent WG, I've appended Norman's missive from  
the Semantics WG regarding v0.02 of the document `Vocabularies in the  
IVOA'.  As the doc says:

	"The purpose of this proposal is to establish a common format for the  
grass-roots creation, publishing, use, and manipulation of  
astronomical vocabularies within the Virtual Observatory, based upon  
the W3C's SKOS standard."

The VOEvent WG is among the most tuberous of the semantic fescue and I  
encourage VOEvent folks to give this document a close reading.

Norman asks:

	"Is it too optimistic to hope that this document might therefore go  
to PR in Trieste?"

Not optimistic enough, I'd say.  Calling this a v0.02 draft is  
absurd.  V0.02 is more mature than other standards that have already  
been adopted, and the document is a textbook example of how such a  
standard should be done.  One more round of internal comments from the  
Semantics and VOEvent WGs should be sufficient, methinks.  We could  
move it to PR within the next couple of months.

Good job!

- Rob
--

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Norman Gray <norman at astro.gla.ac.uk>
> Date: January 14, 2008 2:52:32 PM GMT-07:00
> To: IVOA semantics <semantics at ivoa.net>
> Subject: Vocabularies WD draft
> Reply-To: Norman Gray <norman at astro.gla.ac.uk>
>
>
> Greetings, all.
>
> I'd like to invite people here to take a look at the current (0.02)  
> draft of the document `Vocabularies in the IVOA'.  It's at
>
>   http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaSemantics#Latest_documents
>
> This draft has had a few iterations off-list, with a rather  
> amorphous and informal cc list.  That was a fairly efficient way of  
> resolving some minor issues, and has helped refine the set of more  
> significant issues currently associated with the document.  These  
> more significant issues are now I think concrete enough to be  
> usefully discussable on this IVOA-wide list.  There were some fairly  
> significant issues such as the relationship between these  
> vocabularies and higher-level ontologies work ongoing in the IVOA,  
> but I _believe_ that these were either resolved to broad  
> satisfaction on-list before the solstice, or else have been  
> addressed within the document.
>
> So fire away!
>
>
>
> *** Process ***
>
> The document and the related vocabularies are in a Google Code  
> repository at
>
>    http://volute.googlecode.com
>
> The subversion repository is at <http://code.google.com/p/volute/source 
> >.  That page gives instructions on how to check out a read-only  
> anonymous copy of the tree; if anyone here wants read-write access,  
> mail me a googlemail account name and I'll add you.  If you  
> subscribe to the volute-commits list <http://groups.google.com/group/volute-commits 
> > you can see each repository commit as it happens.
>
> There's an issues list at <http://code.google.com/p/volute/issues/ 
> list>.  I'm in two minds about this issues list, and wonder if a  
> hand-maintained HTML file beside the document source might be  
> preferable.  It's obviously less functional than this issues list,  
> but might be more concrete.  I'm keen to hear comments.
>
> I suspect that we don't want to drown the semantics at ivoa list in a  
> lot of minutiae about commas, SKOS serialisations, and makefiles,  
> and so suggest having such minor-issue discussions somewhere else.   
> The obvious place is a second google groups list; the next  
> possibility is just keeping it as a big cc-list amongst the authors  
> (a bad idea, I think); the third is staying on semantics at ivoa until  
> we're told to shut up.
>
>
>
> *** Next steps ***
>
> At what point does this enter the formal process?  Is it by  
> acclamation on this list, or by Andrea's imprimatur?
>
> I don't believe this need be a long process, and hope that we might  
> have a pretty complete version of the document in a couple of  
> months.  Rick and the other VOEvent people have fairly pressing uses  
> for this work; Alasdair and I have separate reasons for wanting to  
> embed the vocabularies in other systems; this suggests that we might  
> find two implementations which can be reported on at the May  
> Interop.  Is it too optimistic to hope that this document might  
> therefore go to PR in Trieste?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Norman
>
>
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
> eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester, UK
>
>