From: Jim Croft jrc@ANBG.GOV.AU To: TDWG-SDD@USOBI.ORG
The DELTA spec would probably allow you to include a complete description as a lump of text, but it would not be particularly useful to do so.
Yes, you could do this. It would be slightly more useful to break the text up into text characters. For example,
#1. <synonymy>/ #2. <comments on habit>/ #3. <comments on leaves>/ #4. <comments on flowers>/ #5. <comments on distribution>/ #6. <general comments and discussion>/
These could still be combined into a single description, but could also be displayed and searched separately if necessary.
What is usually done is to intersperse such text characters at the appropriate places in a list of coded characters. They can then be used as repositories for information that the author can't or doesn't want to code. The information they contain is accessible in Intkey, and can be used in much the same way as coded information.
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Mike Dallwitz
CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia Phone: +61 2 6246 4075 Fax: +61 2 6246 4000 Email: md@ento.csiro.au Internet: biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/