question about concept representation/formating

[Rob Seaman]

Hi Carlos,

> The point is: when an application downloads my votable, I would like  
> to be able to tell it how the description of the concept should be  
> displayed. Maybe the application decides to follow my advice or it  
> doesn't,  but I think that it would be nice if the information is  
> there so that it can be, eventually, used.

Section 1.2 of the VOTable (v1.2) specification describes how one may  
embed unparsed XML CDATA text:

	http://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_cdata.asp

You could use this to convey almost any sort of presentation pragma  
(links to PDFs?, uuencoded PNGs?) within the document.  There has also  
been a recent thread in the VOTable working group on attaching  
formatting metadata more explicitly to columns:

	http://www.ivoa.net/forum/votable/0905/date.htm

but my interpretation of the discussions is that they are looking for  
a way to express C or FORTRAN-like field specifiers, not some  
mathematical expression language like you describe.

Rob Seaman
NOAO