This is typical of the level of malpractice of those who seem to be taking the running with this discussion. Can you imagine being so clumsy and foolhardly with hard-won data? I despair of this debate.

Patience Nick - new lists take a while to settle down as participants try and establish a common agenda, and people strut personal favorite products and ideologies.

Like Bernie, I am waiting for the discussion to focus itself.

I had initially thought we were looking at a common and comprehensive (interchange?) format for biological descriptive data, perhaps involving an information model of the topic we are dealing with, and importantly, its boundaries. But all too quickly we have got to the level of all things to all people end-products, software and a degree of daunting complexity that we could probably do without at this stage.

Approaching things from an 'if it aint broke dont fix it' point of view, is someone in a position to enunciate/tabulate exactly what it is we are trying to achieve and the shortcomings/limitations of exiting formats in reaching this goal? Having done this we might be better able to partition things into managable and achievable lumps. I was not at the Harvard meeting so I'm a bit reluctant to stick an oar in, but since when has ignorance been a reason not to have an opinion... :)

All the suggestions of 'do it this way using this', while interesting and educational, are tending to obscure rather than clarify what it is we are tring to achieve.

Well, I am getting a bit lost, and I love this data stuff...

jim