Fwd: VOConcepts

[Rob Seaman]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Andrea Preite Martinez <andrea.preitemartinez at rm.iasf.cnr.it>
> Date: June 14, 2005 6:06:39 AM MST
> To: ucd-sci at ivoa.net
> Subject: Re: VOConcepts
> Reply-To: ucd-sci at ivoa.net
>
>
> Dear Rick,
>
> I think I will not vote.
>
> I find the discussion (any discussion) among people with different  
> ideas
> very stimulating.
> And sometimes also more useful than perfect agreement.
> Reducing the size of the group until you can feel eventually "among  
> us"
> is not good at all in real life, certainly not in the VO.
>
> Just to show you that you are not the only one "uneasy" with somebody
> else's point of view, I'll make an example of how "uneasy" could  
> feel an
> UCD-folk like me.
> Take for instance the UCD you proposed few days ago:
>
> instr.obsty.site;weather.seeing  just to express "seeing"
>
> When I saw it I made a jump on my chair: why?
> In inverse order of importance:
>
> 1. The UCD-like syntax is wrong: first the "quantity", then the  
> "qualifier"
> it should read: weather.seeing;instr.obsty.site
>
> 2. We are proposing UCD-words, not UCDs. If you propose an  
> independent word
> for "seeing", ok, it's :weather.seeing
>
> 3. My mind works in terms of "how to assign ucd-words starting from a
> description, and then build an UCD" e.g. in term of the process to
> build an UCD from one or more keyword(s):
> the "keywords => ucd-words => UCDs" chain.
> It is impossible (in this framework) to go from the single keyword
> "seeing" to an UCD composed of two UCD-words
> (each one of these UCD-words needs its own description).
>
> Let's reverse the roles: you jump on the chair when you see the  
> description
> of the src.class.* words.
> You are perfectly right. What is not said is that I do not use the
> description
> field to assign words/ucds: I use a series of words (keywords
> derived from the description) that are OR-ed,
> which is exactly equivalent to the loosier description you suggest.
>
>
> As I already said, the ucd vocabulary is not only composed of words
> that are "quantities". More and more "objects" are creeping in, and  
> I can
> imagine the development of two sub-lists :
>
> a "q-list" slowly evolving (or even stabilized; after all the  
> number of
> new (astro-)physical quantities per year is probably very easy
> to control!!)
>
> and an "o-list" (or whatever name we decide for it!!) for "non- 
> quantities",
>
> both lists with the same syntax (just for simplicity and
> "interoperability" (!!),
> so that we can continue to build UCDs of the form:
>
> word[q-list];word[o-list] ...
>
> as we do today without knowing that we are actually doing it (!)
>
> Andrea
>
>
> ====================================================================== 
> ========
> Andrea Preite Martinez                  andrea at rm.iasf.cnr.it
> Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale        Tel.:+39.06.4993.4641
> Area di Ricerca di Tor Vergata          Fax.:+39.06.2066.0188
> Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100         Cell:+39.339.3817355
> 00133 Roma
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>
>