> Particularly, I'm getting unhappy about Jack's (??I think) mention > of A: as Author (of words). Or, more particularly, I use A: heavily as > Area, and am not comfortable, about 1) conflicting with other meanings > (it's not the first time A: == Author has been mentioned) and 2) the > issues that get raised by hierarchical data fields. In practice there's > no problem to it (that I can see) that a little commonsense can't deal > with, but it's not quite comfortable all the same. I could (maybe) > invent something like "%%A:Sweden:J\"amtland", "%%A:England:Northwest", > but these things are more useful if software understands them ...
We already have another field that is used for geographical info, "O:". The way some people have used these assumes that a tune will only be assigned one location (as with a field transcriber's notes), and hence every Area will be contained in a unique country of Origin. Your own files don't work that way: you take one transcription of a tune and list all the countries that lay claim to something like it. So if you find a tune in both Yorkshire and Nova Scotia you have a teensy weensy problemette working out what "A:Halifax" means. Better to use the O: field hierarchically: O:Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada O:Bradford and Bingley, Yorkshire, England which is less ambiguous, frees up A: for a very important function we don't yet have a standardized field for, and is not much harder to search on. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro". ------> off-list mail to "j-c" rather than "abc" at this site, please <------ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
