This is a problem but an easy one (I think). In natural language adjectives, adverbs and the like have a scope defined by the grammar that we learn as children... or are born with but we will not get into THAT here. In any case the qualifier modifier modifies the value of the character, not the character as a whole. So in the standard, any value should optionally be able to be qualified by placing the qualifier marker in the scope of the value marker. If we intend the spines to be rare not <ELEMENT_NAME> leaf </ELEMENT_NAME> <VALUE> lobed margins </VALUE> <VALUE> with spines </VALUE> * <QUALIFIER> rarely </QUALIFER> </ELEMENT>

but,

<ELEMENT_NAME> leaf </ELEMENT_NAME> <VALUE> lobed margins </VALUE> <VALUE> with spines <QUALIFIER> rarely </QUALIFER> </VALUE> </ELEMENT>

order would not matter so we could say <VALUE> <QUALIFIER> rarely </QUALIFER> with spines </VALUE>

The word "with" should not be in any of this but it is another issue. At 10:29 PM 9/4/00 +1000, Jim Croft wrote:

I agree with Eric on this one... in the example below, there is nothing in the structure to say where the qualifier belongs... If you read the data sequentially you might have a pretty good guess, but a specification that relies on sequence rather than the structural relationships and clear (explicit?) definitions of components for sense and meaning, is an bit fragile in my view...

jim

...

I think there is a real difference in terms of a reduction in ambiguity. We should generally make an effort to clearly associate modifiers with the object that they are intended to modify. Suppose we have something like the following:

<ELEMENT> <ELEMENT_NAME> leaf </ELEMENT_NAME> <VALUE> lobed margins </VALUE> <VALUE> with spines </VALUE> <QUALIFIER> rarely </QUALIFER> </ELEMENT>

How should such a construct be interpretted? Do spines cover the leaf as a whole, or are they confined to the lobed margins? Is it the spines which are rarely present, or the lobed margins?