[sc34wg3] Re: [tmcl-wg] Type versus Class: settled yet?

[Mary Nishikawa]

>*MN
>>| So we usually say, what type or (kind) of ice cream is your
>>| favorite?  We do not say, what class of ice cream is your favorite.
>>This is colloquial use of the terms, not technical.

*Murray
>As I mentioned previously, there's been many a long, historical argument
>about this issue. We're here repeating many of the discussions I've read
>from the 19th century, so I'd hardly call this a colloquialism. If she'd
>used DNA being discussed by a group of scientists instead of ice cream,
>the example would have still held.

Since I have training in Molecular biology, I guess I should have written 
about this example instead :) Thanks Murray.

However, I wanted to use an really universal example, so I selected ice 
cream. I also thought about blood typing though. Maybe that would have been 
more convincing.

I guess my thinking on this one is also based on all of editing research 
papers on microbiological classifications (when someone finds a new strain 
-- a paper needs to be written to document it -- in Japan with the all of 
the humidity -- we have not even scratched the surface on all of the 
strains and varieties we have here -- so I have helped researchers publish 
their findings.

It would be good to have Bergey's Manual of Systematic 
Bacteriology  modeled as a use case for TMCL.
http://www.life.umd.edu/classroom/bsci424/BSCI223WebSiteFiles/Chapter10.htm

5. Phage typing is the identification of bacterial species and strains by 
the determination of their susceptibility to various phages.

6. The sequences of amino acids in proteins of related organisms are 
similar. Related organisms have identical proteins; this characteristic can 
be ascertained by PAGE (polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis) "fingerprints."

These are types not classes.

But I have changed Class to Type  since this was agreed to and will be 
consistent with SAM.

Murray, the supertype-subtype description in SAM is not Normative at the 
moment.

I resolved this with Lars Marius with a note in SAM. See the editor's draft 
and the note on supertype-subtype.

   <URL: http://www.isotopicmaps.org/sam/sam-model/ >

So you can use superclass-subclass and define what your mean. This actually 
may be better for you since you can exclude the looping (see previous 
discussions) in your definition :)

Yes, the language is important since what we are working with here is how 
to represent semantics in a computer system.

Cheers,
Mary