TDWG-SDD XML proposals

[Kevin Thiele]

Bob and Jim,

surely the problem is that the "information" in a natural-language
description and the "data" needed for e.g. an interactive key are not
completely, and never will be completely, mappable. To try to make them
fully mappable involves forcing a massively parallel supercomputer (the one
sitting in front of the screen) to be content with the data potentials of an
electronic calculator.

| Workers: scapes and tibiae lack erect hair
|
| mapped as
|
| <FEATURE name="scapes and tibiae erect hair">
|   <FEATURE_VALUE>lack</FEATURE_VALUE>
| </FEATURE>
|
| reverse-mapped to:
|
| scapes and tibiae erect hair lack.

makes me cringe. And this after all the shit heaped on taxonomists! :-)

We gotta do a whole lot better than this. I'm sure we will.

Cheers - k