UCD verifier?

[Rob Seaman]

On Nov 9, 2005, at 1:23 AM, Andrea Preite Martinez wrote:

>> With the recent talk about the UCD1+ list not conforming to the  
>> UCD  specification, I am prompted to wonder whether anyone is  
>> working on a  UCD verifier - or perhaps one already exists?
>
> Yes, try the  validate  tool at
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/UCD/tools.htx

Thanks.  Other pointed me to that, too.

The rules and meta-rules for UCD building imply that each UCD fills a  
niche in a larger semantic ecology.  Each new UCD causes a potential  
challenge to all previously declared UCDs or lists or namespaces of  
same.

The tool I was suggesting would not only test a single proposed UCD  
against the syntactical rules, but also test a list of same (e.g.,  
representing a namespace) against the rules for building lists of  
UCDs.  I suspect that the notion that two namespaces cannot contain  
identical UCDs (or more stringently, was it identical "words"?) will  
fall by the wayside, but if not, it would prove useful - almost  
mandatory - to have a tool to vet two lists against each other, or  
for instance, a newly proposed list against all previously registered  
namespaces.

Which is to say that the choice of rules for assembling lists of UCDs  
is not a completely free design parameter.

Rob Seaman
NOAO