The end of DELTA?

[Jean-Marc Vanel]

Hello

- The main existing formats, if we count by the number of species
covered,
are not DELTA, or other Computer Taxonomists's inventions, they are the
semi-formal formats of the existing floras in plain text, which contain
the
vast majority of existing species;
- the priority is to put this existing material in XML (this can be done
using standard parsing techniques);
- we can then :
    - make queries using all the power of XPath
    - make all kinds of RDF statements on the species from the outside,
e.g.
an entomologist can, in an buterfly description, or any context,
indicate
that it is a pollinizator for some plant species (see Annex)

These techniques are in the straight line of the World Wide Web
Consortium
Recommandations.
Using such  RDF statements, it is also possible to add sets of
characters à
la DELTA.

So I propose to decouple the description form the specific taxonomic
issues,
such as finding keys applying to specific subsets of species, minimal
sets
of characters, etc. This is good design since no consensus can be
quickly
achieved on taxonomic issues, since researchers want to keep their
freedom.

It seems that what the majority of botanists (and others biologists and
the
humanity in general) needs the most urgently, is a usable World Flora.

Moreover, having reference descriptions available as URI (Uniform
Resource
Identifiers) on the Web, allows different taxonomists researchers to
link
their formal descriptions to a common reference, and to become
interoperable.

See much more details on the Worldwide Botanical Database project at :
http://jmvanel.free.fr

P.S. Can somebody point me to documents on:
XDELTA, NEXUS and XDF

Regards

Jean-Marc Vanel


ANNEX
USING RDF statement and Xpointer to add information on a plant species

<rdf:RDF xml:lang="en"
   xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
   xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/PR-rdf-schema-19990303#">

<rdf:Description
about="htpp://www.rbgkew.org.uk/Flora_Europaeae.xml#xptr(species[genus='Viola'][name='riviniana'])">

  <pollinizator>Aglais urticae</pollinizator>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Of course I give no guaranty on the entomological truth of this
statement.