Bob and Jim,
surely the problem is that the "information" in a natural-language description and the "data" needed for e.g. an interactive key are not completely, and never will be completely, mappable. To try to make them fully mappable involves forcing a massively parallel supercomputer (the one sitting in front of the screen) to be content with the data potentials of an electronic calculator.
| Workers: scapes and tibiae lack erect hair | | mapped as | | <FEATURE name="scapes and tibiae erect hair"> | <FEATURE_VALUE>lack</FEATURE_VALUE> | </FEATURE> | | reverse-mapped to: | | scapes and tibiae erect hair lack.
makes me cringe. And this after all the shit heaped on taxonomists! :-)
We gotta do a whole lot better than this. I'm sure we will.
Cheers - k