Kevin Thiele a écrit :

Jean-Marc's work does indeed need appraisal by the group in relation to our goals. My understanding from a brief perusal of his site is that he's trying to establish a franework for creating a set (one day he hopes for a global set) of descriptions of plants on the web,

Yes, by merging Flora descriptions with character-based data à la Delta.

the data structured in such a way as to be queryable as well as readable.

Yes, it will make biological knowledge really accessible. For the query aspect, I try to structure data in a way suitable to export to several kind of programs:

- Artificial Intelligence - Delta and LucID - databases, relational and OO

Two likely differences between the present attempt and his may be

1. that we need to create something more flexible so that any botanist can

capture any aspect of systematic data for any taxon - i.e. a Stipa can be described just as fully as a Taraxacum and a Nepenthes, with data ranging from morphology to anatomy, phytochemisty and gene sequences (the latter is the only easy one). Jean-Marc's thing seems to me to be of the fairly inflexible variety

This assertion is "present by misinterpretation". The set of properties and organs is of course not limited, although for convenience a standard set will be provided.

2. Jean-Marc's model is directed towards capturing descriptions. We need to

also allow for identification data for the range of key programs available and in the future. Thus, things like character sets, dependencies, allowing for misinterpretations etc may perhaps have little meaning in Jean-Marc's domain, but are critical in ours.

You must not doubt about my commitment to integrate those things in a general model. I'm currently searching funding/sponsorship because now I have to work on this after normal work hours. Anyway next monday I'll present a more detailed model and example, showing how data and meta-data published on different sites can be used together.

Cheers JMV

-- <person> <first_name>Jean-Marc</first_name> <name>Vanel</name> <project>Worlwide Botanical Knowledge Base - making botany available on Internet <a href="http://wwbota.free.fr/" >site</a> </project> <homePage>http://jmvanel.free.fr/</homePage> <a href="mailto:jmvanel@free.fr">mail (eventually put "wwbota" in subject to route your mail in relevant folder)</a> </person>