Could one constrain further by expressing within the schema the hierarchical relationships between the elements(eg 'blade' and 'petiole' as child elements of leaf') or would the introduction of terminology into the 'standard' be a step too far?
Putting on my programmer hat here, those kinds of things should be about to be included in whatever XML standards were set up relatively transparent to the user. For instance, "leaf" by default would contain certain properties (size, shape, petiole, base, apex, number, arrangement, location) that the user could code or mark as non-existant withought having to worry aout the "parent/child" or other object relationship. Folk who want to *write* software that uses the XML (or whatever) standard would be the ones to worry about those issues.
Susan Farmer sfarmer@goldsword.com Botany Department, University of Tennessee http://www.goldsword.com/sfarmer/Trillium