[GO-ESSP] Re: Units and NERC DataGrid

[Peter Murray-Rust]

At 11:19 06/12/2004 -0700, John Caron wrote:
<msgSnipped/>

>(Note:  Im: not quite sure how this discussion got off the 
>scimarkuplang-list . ive put it back on. I wonder if interested 
>individuals should get on that and continue there?)

I am really excited by the spread of discussion and the quality of 
contributions. I note that there are now 2-3 lists that are involved - this 
is inevitable given the interest and provenance.

One activity that is extremely useful (but hard work) is to annotate this 
on the wiki. I did this originally for XML-DEV (I called it "XML Jewels" 
and it was appreciated) and more recently Leigh Dodds took it up. A typical 
page would be:

John Caron raised the point:

"I also feel that what we need is more along the lines of a semantic web
resource rather than a downloadable executable approach: in other words
a units ontology that provides a units vocabulary plus the knowledge
about which units may be interconverted and how.
"
and Robert Miner felt there were two separate issues:

"One is some sort of
markup for defining and describing units and their interrelations.
The GML schema, for example, seems to live mostly in this space.

However, another group of users isn't so interested in the units
language per se. Instead, they want an authoritative central registry
of units of some sort, so that units definitions can be registered,
referenced, retrieved and converted by various user communities. ..
"

Hopefully pointers can be given to the full archive so that readers can 
follow fuller discussions and the posters are not misrepresented.

As I said it's hard work but extremely valuable. The wiki makes it a *lot* 
easier than when I started it!

P.





Peter Murray-Rust
Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics
Chemistry Department, Cambridge University
Lensfield Road, CAMBRIDGE, CB2 1EW, UK
Tel: +44-1223-763069