[...]
> In v2, you can create a text file with a certain indented
> format, that will import to LR as a hierarchy. It works like this:
>
[...]
>
That's very interesting - I didn't know you could do that.
> It gets the synonyms right too. :-) But if you create a new
> branch like "Hoofed animals" and move "Horses" to this
> branch, LR will not understand. Then you end up with Horses
> in two places:
>
> [Animals]
> ....
> Livestock
> Pigs
> {Swines}
> Horses
> {Equines}
> Cattle
> {Cows}
> {Bulls}
> Hoofed animals
> Horses
> {Equines}
>
> My point with all this is that inconcistencies can develop,
> and I sort of imagined that many people must have seen this
> already and developed a sort of best practice.
I don't think this is necessarily a mistake in principle, and I don't think
your example is a mistake at all. The problem lies in the way people
(mis)use or misunderstand hierarchies. I recommend David Lorge Parnas's
essay "On a 'buzzword': hierarchical structure".
Livestock and Hoofed animals are intersecting sets - some animals genuinely
belong in both. A hierarchy which includes Hoofed animals sounds to me as
though it is vaguely Linnaean - hooves indicating common descent - whereas a
hierarchy which includes Livestock suggests that it is based on the way
humans make use of the animals. It certainly doesn't indicate common
descent. So in the example given, the error is yours for expecting LR to
recognise this.
The lesson to be learnt is that you must think carefully about whether these
are genuine hierarchies, or the same type of hierarchy. Try to make your
hierarchies represent the real world. I try to think in terms of sets and
subsets - set theory is the secret of the universe - and recognise the
distinction between hierarchies and other types of relation.
By some peculiar coincidence, I was thinking about animals' feet during some
idle moments at work this afternoon. My office contains people with a number
of different eating taboos. People who don't eat beef, people who don't eat
pork, others who don't eat horse, rat, badger or dog. The only mammals that
everyone seems to eat are sheep, goats and deer of one sort or another, and
I think they all have the same sort of feet, don't they, which differ from
the controversial animals. They're all quite closely related aren't they? Or
am I just wasting company time thinking like this? Why don't people eat
badgers?
[...]
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