From: Kevin Thiele kevin.thiele@PI.CSIRO.AU To: TDWG-SDD@USOBI.ORG
Example:
5,3/3&1<when infected with virus>/<occasionally>2<@reliability 3>
= Flowers red, or red and white (when infected with virus), or occasionally yellow.
There are various types of things here that are masquerading as being similar, when they're not at all. "<when infected by a virus>" is perhaps a true comment. Note that these comments are only used for natural language descriptions (they're stripped out when DELTA translates to an interactive key etc). "<occasionally>" is a qualifier as defined in the draft spec.
The things are similar in that they qualify state values or attributes. The distinction between free-text and coded qualifiers is also made in the proposed DELTA enhancements (see http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/standard/proposal.exe). The coded qualifiers in the DELTA proposals are distinguished by being preceded by the symbol '@'. The above example could have been written 5,3/3&1<when infected with virus>/<@rarely>2<@reliability 3> The coded qualifiers could be checked for validity by programs, and could be used by programs for various purposes (including natural-language descriptions). Although the primary purpose of free-text qualifiers is for natural-language descriptions, they could also be used for other purposes (e.g. they could be searched). Their omission from the current version of Intkey is only for historical reasons (and is also irrelevant to the present discussion).
Lucid is currently the only program that uses this type of qualifier [like @rarely] in identification, and it's very important. <@reliability 3> is a command for a program. This should be made clear by the tag so that other programs can ignore it.
Of course, _any_ tag can be ignored or used by a program. I see no reason to distinguish, in the standard, between those tags that are used by the current version of LucID, and those that are not. Character and attribute reliabilities (which are not implemented in the current LucID) are arguably more important for identification than the '@rarely' qualifier.
I've always been bothered by the use of & (and) vs / (or) in DELTA. Using Mike's example: 5,3/3&1 = "Flowers red, or red and white" The use of & is handy for codifying natural-language descriptions ...
'nuff said. The connectors 'and' and 'to' were put in DELTA for this purpose, in response to user demand. Omitting them from a new standard would be a retrograde step.
... but in other applications it's highly problematical. This is a homology problem ... The red & white broken colouring of virus-infected tulips is actually non-homologous with uniform red or uniform white and should be a separate character (or at least a separate state).
Let's not confuse empirical facts with principles. 'red and white' _could_ be a homologous, intermediate condition between 'red' and 'white', in the same way that 'red to white' could be (cf. colour change in hydrangeas). You have tacitly admitted this by suggesting that it could be a separate state.
In multi-purpose databases, you often have to make compromises in the way characters are defined, so that they will work reasonable well for all purposes. The possibilities in this example might be
#1. flowers <colour>/ 1. red/ 2. white/
#2. flowers <colour>/ 1. entirely deep red/ 2. red and white/ 3. entirely white/
#3. entirely red flowers <presence>/ 1. present/ 2. absent/
#4. red and white flowers <presence>/ 1. present/ 2. absent/
#5. entirely white flowers <presence> 1. present/ 2. absent/
Character 1 is simple, produces the best natural-language descriptions, and is often acceptable for other applications. However, one of the other formulations would probably have to be used (depending on the capabilities of the software) if the distinction between 'red and white' and the other conditions was important for identification or classification. The natural-language descriptions would suffer, particularly if characters 3-5 were used.
It's impossible to cater for the connector 'to' by redefining characters in this way.
--
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/