Vocabularies working area

This is a scratch area for the various ongoing vocabularies projects.

• Scope of a Standard Vocabulary: StdVocabScope
• Use Cases for a Standard Vocabulary: StdVocabUseCases

The vocabularies document is in its RFC period, until 10 October 2008

Drafts and issues:

• Vocabularies document, latest version
• The editors' draft at http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ivoa/vocabularies is potentially updated at a somewhat higher cadence than formal releases
• For document source, see the Volute repository, in particular the code checkout
• Complete download, including SKOS vocabulary files, at Volute downloads
• Issues list at http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ivoa/vocabularies/issues

Vocabularies in the document

Issue (vocabset-5) was to decide which vocabularies to include in the standard document. There are six vocabularies which have been associated with the draft standardisation process, namely

• the A&A journal keyword list, the IVOA AOIM list, and the 1993 IAU thesaurus, whose inclusion is as far as I can see completely uncontroversial;
• an IVOA Thesaurus based on the IAU-93, which may or may not be in this standard depending on whether people would prefer a completely separate process to develop it;
• a UCD1+ vocabulary (though this deals with a different set of concepts ‚Äì namely data types ‚Äì from the other vocabularies and might arguably connect poorly to them); and
• a SKOS version of the list of constellations, which is very simple, and which might reasonably find a home in this standard on that ground alone.

In addition, there are multiple informal keyword lists associated with the VOEvent arena (see Roy's message and Rob's). These haven't been SKOSified at all, and Rick's excellent suggestion is that these be left as homework for the VOEvent group.

The resolution of that issue was that all these vocabularies should be included in the document, except IVOA-T, which will have a parallel standardisation process.

-- NormanGray - 12 Sep 2008