There are a number of issues:

• how are character lists imported if a computer is not connected to

the net?

It was already said that we need a local copy. I think this is quite natural especially because I believe we will have proprietary database formats the most applications will work on, and not directly XML.

• how are multiple imported character lists merged - which takes

precedence (local or remote)

We need to be able to combine both character definition and item description in a way that some characters may go across multiple item subsets but also some character used only in certain items. If items are then reduced to the level of taxa in a summarize/synthesize operation, even more complex structures can result.

• versioning of character lists

Of course, with major versions in which meaning is changed, minor version in which only corrections and additions are made, and perhaps subminor with corrections only.

• what if a remote character list is (or becomes) invalid (related

to versioning)

Globally unique state IDS may consist of a local ID (not the sequence number), the name and version of the standard.

I believe the merging, updating, controlling business of versioned character definition standards is one of the main things why we need more structure in the character definition (see basic property discussion etc.).

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I believe we need:

Globally unique IDs for _states_ (perhaps for character and headings as well, not sure). The ID should be independend of ID numbers like in DELTA and DeltaAccess, that are simultaneously ordering numbers.

A local copy that refers to a published standard. I believe it would be good if the future standard allows manual links e.g. to a standard published in print.

I imagine an attribute in which the author of a character definition acertains that in his or her opinion the meaning of this data item is identical to a standard, even if the wording may have been slightly changed.

The problem is that ANY character definition standard needs to be partly changed locally. Certain attributes of the character definition, esp. those that are language specific (character and state wordings, including character and state specific number and date formats) or refer to formatting and structuring (ParagraphLink, SentenceLink, CommaLink for natural language, Sequential ordering numbers, Heading, etc.) are highly likely to be in need for change.

It may be desirable to split the character definition into a logical part, changes of which imply changes of contents, and a formatting part, which is always used as template only, and can be freely changed.

(This implies that the character name needs to be doubled/split into a global development name, probably in English, and a name that is displayed in local language on the user interface.)

Gregor

---------------------------------------------------------- Gregor Hagedorn G.Hagedorn@bba.de Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Koenigin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203

Often wrong but never in doubt!