Re: [spoon-discuss] Materiel

["Glotmorf" <dwhytock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28 Dec 2003 at 21:23, Baron von Skippy wrote:

>One question, though: Say we have Inorganics->Metals-
>Iron,Gold,Copper,Lead,Silver,Zinc,Aluminium,etc... and I want 
>to throw in another layer, say Metals->Valuable, and stick Gold and 
>Silver into it - how is that done, especially if Gold and 
>Silver have lower-level materials beneath them?

Well, first off I'd suggest not using "Valuable" as a 
category, since what's valuable to you might not be valuable 
to me. :)  Aside from that, I'd say categories should 
correspond to some property that some materials have that 
other materials don't, and have the materials that don't be in 
a separate category at the same level -- rare and common, 
conducting and non-conducting, etc.  Or alternately just add 
conductivity, rarity, etc. as properties that don't 
necessarily categorize.  It isn't absolutely necessary to have 
a category, unless someone is planning to do something in 
particular with things that would fall under that category and 
there may be other things that would be added to the category.

Now, if you're planning on having bunches of materials that 
have overlapping properties, there should either be properties 
that are attached to some and not to others (dare we say 
keywords?) and possibly no top-level categorization method at 
all...but then, how would we do subcategories?  Only things 
with certain keywords can get other certain keywords?

						Glotmorf

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