[tcs-lc] Minor modifications prior TDWG ratification vote

[Nozomi Ytow]

Hi Rich,

> I have treated it as a condition, where the difference in taxonomic rank of
> a child taxon name and its immediate parent taxon name exceeds a threshold
> level (e.g., a genus name is indicated as having an immediate parent
> assigned to a name that is of rank "order", with no indication of
> family-rank parent).

There can be cases where it doesn't work because of optional ranks
such as subfamily.

> Is there a definition of "incertae sedis" that is not directly derived from
> the relationship between the rank of a child name and the rank of its
> immediate parent name?

See above.

> What is the utility of defining "incertae sedis"
> explicitly, rather than deriving it?

Because source data are unnecessary perfect.  Data
verificatin/scrutinise is one of major motivation to use TCS.

> It seems to me a Concept cannot be
> considered "incertae sedis" without the context of its parent (and the
> nomenclatural rank of the name assigned to its parent), and therefore can
> always be derived be comparing name-rank of child concept and name-rank of
> parent concept.

It is desing issue, or, application performance issue.
You are right logically, but it is not optimal in performance.
Making minOccur=0 is logically streightforward but I think it is still
overkill because it allows valid XML document with nonsense semantics.


> Could you provide an example to illustrate how the "other" relationship type
> and its corresponding modifier would be used?

Example 1:
I have relationshp types in Flora of Japan data doesn't fit to
enumerated TCS-relationship types.  These could be resolved by
botanist, but not by me nor part-time workers who enterd. the data.
I'd like to ask botanists assist using TCS.  See FoJ data you
already got our Website; I don't have convinience access to
MS-Access now.

Example 2:
Relationships between vernacular names in multiple scripts.  We have
Hiragarna, Katanaka, Knaji and Roma-ji representations of single
word in Japanes.  Kanji can be subdivided into simplified and
traditional Kanji depending on character.  Adding more, 30% Kanji of
UCS-2 have one or variants equivalent to the Kanji.  There is at liest
one database recording Japanese vernacular names with distionction of
scripts, e.g. "Hiragana of", "Kanji of".  Those relationship can't be
covered by specifying locale execpt Roma-ji (phonetic transliteration
into ASCII), because all has ja or ja_JP locale.

People may think these are exceptional cases, but I'd like to see TCS
is used to exchange those data if it can be achieved only by minor
modification.

Cheers,
JMS