Dear colleagues,

I look forward seeing many of you in Brazil. I am very happy that more people can attend now than we initially expected.

We will meet at the reception of the Vitoria hotel on Monday 14, at 9:30. The meeting room will be in the hotel. If you arrive later, the hotel staff should be able to point you to the room. You can drop into the meeting at any time you desire [you just won't get out again :-)].

The agenda is open for your contributions! If you have specific points you can mail me until Friday afternoon GMT.

My own priorities which I believe we absolutely need to finish would be to clarify the use of data types, esp. categorical, numerical, and textual information, esp. in comparison with DELTA vs. xml, and to clarify and finalize the definitions of special character states (unknown, unchecked, not applicable, variable, etc.). I believe after this the definition from Australia will already start to become usable.

Best wishes

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!