Hi,

I got some time last night to start giving this some thought. I've got some questions:

1. Collation rules. These are currently unspecified. Any objections if I leave them out of an attempt to express these in XML? We can revisit and revise this portion as time goes on.

2. Collated Character source. I see these as essentially a drill down mechanism that further identifies a 'bottom-level' taxon. Is it reasonable to include character dependencies 'upwards'? Am I right in believing that multiple character sets could drill down into the same source (perhaps produced by different organisations, researchers, techniques). In this case, is there a principal source for going back upwards? It seems unfair to expect a treatment to keep track of all other treatments which point to it (I may be infering too much here).

3. Why should characters only have properties at the lowest level? What is the 'lowest level' given that drill-down can occur? Could you outline the reasoning here?

4. Its possible to provide a Character list internally to the treatment or reference an external one. Will it be a requirement that both could be used (i.e. combine the internal and external lists.)

Cheers,

L.