Beyond the draft proposal

[Rob Seaman]

On Monday 04 February 2008 10:55:04 am Frederic Hessman wrote:

> there are the folowing (expressed as tokens)
>
> 	JohnsonPhotometry
> 	RMagnitude
> 	Filter
>
> so don't we really need
>
> 	RFilter
>
> or even
>
> 	JohnsonRFilter?

It comes down to how the terms are likely to be used - a vocabulary  
doesn't stand alone, but is embedded in a language which has rules  
other than idiom, and in a culture that has explicit and implicit  
usage patterns.

Before we start building a hierarchy of vocabularies, we should  
assemble usage scenarios.  I suggest VOEvent is a good place to start.

The usage above is likely to be something like PhotometricSystem =  
"Johnson", Bandpass = "R", Value = "22.7 mag", etc.  Implicit is that  
this is some kind of calibrated instrumental value.

- Rob

PS - we're starting to head right back toward UCDs.  On the other  
hand, our focus shouldn't be on a lot of proper nouns.  Should we  
distinguish "parts of speech?"  "JohnsonPhotometry" really represents  
some kind of phrase - an enumerated adjective "Johnson" plus a noun,  
"PhotometricSystem".

PPS - one really has to believe that other communities can provide  
insight.  If "ontology" is the answer, what is the question?