Jim Croft writes:

Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 08:16:11 +1100 Leszeck wrote:

...

What is referred to as "species" value="alfari"/ is actually the specific epithet. The "species" value in this instance would actually be "Azteca alfari" You're probably familiar with this protocol of referring to the scientific name of an organism which implies citing the genus name & the specific epithet which together comprise the species names - as per the Linnean system of binomial nomenclature. Should I have the 'wrong end of the stick' of the discourse at this stage then please advise me.

Jim Croft replied

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Computers do not have any trouble with such a model and can build wonderful and tidy tree-like hierarchies.

The truth is that we secretly conceptualize nodes in such trees as the full path from the root of the tree. Hence to us the <speciesName> object is the full taxonomy. However, it is quite easy in any of the languages with which one might process XML to turn one form into the other. We didn't intend to propose that markup as a standard. In each biological community, the biologists will set a standard if they can't live with one some other community has already made. And we computer scientists get to clean up the mess. :-)

Whether or not this is a good example, it is widely understood that you can't force a single standard on a group just because they seem to have common interests. Biologists seem to be an ornery lot. If they don't like something they go do it a new way. Which often actually tends to advance matters!

Bob