Cleanroom examples: The taxonomy system

Almost all wildlife data work requires the representation of specific taxonomic arrangements or classifications of organisms. Accordingly, I've designed a set of objects for this job. See the PostScript documentation for the input files.

This system also supports systems for abbreviating names to short alphabetic codes, such as the Bird Banding Lab's four-letter bird code system.

Here are the principal objects, with links to their sources:

Txny

This object represents an entire taxonomic arrangement.

Hier

Represents the hierarchy of ranks, e.g., Class, Order, Family, Subfamily, Genus, Species.

Rank

Represents one rank in the hierarchy, for example, genus rank.

Taxon

Represents one taxon, such as Family Hominidae or species Homo sapiens.

AbTab

A table defining all abbreviations.

AbSym

One entry in the AbTab.

AbBind

Represents one way that an abbreviation can be interpreted.

Abbr

Represents one abbreviation.

Last updated: 1996/11/01 21:27:06
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/~shipman/soft/clean/txny.html