[Sigia-l] Re: Thesaurus: Node Labels vs Facet Indicators

[Leonard Will]

In message <3f34a59f0504092035751b600c at mail.gmail.com> on Sun, 10 Apr
2005, Melvin Kumar <melvink2 at gmail.com> wrote
>Apologises if it was not clear enough. To identify a facet, you need a "facet
>indicator"  , meaning there has to be a distinctive differenciation in
>appearance of the facet indicator so that when users see it they know that
>its a facet not something else. ( Interface issue)

Be careful not to use the term "facet" for the label. The facet is the
whole group of terms that belong to the same fundamental category, not
the label used to identify that category.

Just to keep the discussion clear, I should perhaps note that we have
adopted the advice of classification experts to restrict the term "facet
indicator" to the following definition

        facet indicator : notational device that indicates the start of
        a new facet within a synthesized compound classmark

        Examples of facet indicators are the 0 in the Dewey Decimal
        Classification and parentheses and quotation symbols in the
        Universal Decimal Classification. In the past the term facet
        indicator has been used as synonymous with node label but that
        usage should be avoided, to avoid confusion.

>Also, when they see a "node label" they must be able  distinctivly
>differenciate that this is a "node label".

Yes, I agree. If we need distinct terms for the two types of node label,
containing either

(1) the name of a facet to which following terms belong, e.g. (people),
(activities) or (places); or

(2) the attribute or characteristic of division by which an array of
sibling terms has been sorted or grouped, e.g. <vehicles by motive
power>, <people by age> or <wines by colour>

then we might call the first one a "facet label" and the second one a
"node label", but that is just my personal suggestion and at present the
term "node label" is used for both.

Leonard Will

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