Re: DOCBOOK: Marking Up Taxonomic Names

[Mike Taylor <mike@seatbooker.net>]

> Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 11:09:20 +0100
> From: Nigel Hardy <nwh@aber.ac.uk>
> 
>> Well, no.  Plenty of genus and species names are not particularly
>> foreign. They're italicised _because_ they're genus and species
>> names.
>
> It's my understanding that the origin of the tradition (now
> requirement) to italicise them in print is that of italicising
> foreign phrases.

Ah.  Well, there you have the advantage of me :-)

>> The problem is if I run into a stylesheet that decides that it's
>> appropriate to, for example, use a bold font for foreign phrases.
>
> Mechanisms involving the use of "role" attributes rely on specially
> adapted style sheets and ensuring their use.

Ah.

> Ensuring the use of style sheets which do honour <foreignphrase> in
> an acceptable way seems to me easier, when we are processing our own
> documents.

Yes, in that limited case ...  But:

> If we release our SGML/XML, we can never prevent the use by a client
> agent of other style sheets and by using a standard near equivalent
> we maximise the chances of an acceptable rendering.

I see.  I take your point that _nothing_ I say in my DocBook document
will _ever_ actually _guarantee_ anything about the rendering.  Hence
the phrase "processing _expectations_" rather than something more
concrete.  So unless I'm prepared to mess with stylesheets (and I'm
not) I'm always on slippery ground.

That said, then, I think a combination of Right-Thing-fulness and
pragmatics (<foreignphrase> is pretty much always going to be set in
italics, right?) leads me to the conclusion that the best I can do is:

	<foreignphrase role="taxon">Sauroposeidon proteles</foreignphrase>

... or I could get a bit fancier and say something like:

	<foreignphrase role="species">
	  <phrase role="genus-name">Sauroposeidon</phrase>
	  <phrase role="species-name">proteles</phrase>
	</foreignphrase>

But that throws up a whole nother can of worms, so let's not go there
:-)

--

Looking to the future:

>> (So obviously The Right Answer in DocBook version _n_ is to have
>> explicit <taxon type="genus"> and similar tags.  But that's not
>> going to happen soon, and probably not at all.)
>
> As you say, that's not going to happen soon. I would suggest in any
> case that such an element would need to be more complex, including
> (at least) facilities for authorities and for ensuring logical
> correctness of the taxonomic hierarchy.

Well, the hierarchy above is a nod in that direction; but you can't
"ensure logical correctness of the taxonomic hierarchy" when no two
taxonomists agree what is correct :-)

 _/|_	 _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
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