[Gofriends] Canceled: proposal to remove underscores from root term names

[Midori Harris]

Dear GO and Friends,

In response to this proposal, a substantial majority of users have 
indicated that removing underscores from root term names would cause 
problems that would outweigh the benefits.

We therefore withdraw the proposal, and will not change the root term 
names.

Thanks you for considering the proposal, and for your prompt replies.

Midori
on behalf of GO's ontology developers

On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Midori Harris wrote:

> Dear GO and Friends,
>
> A proposal has been made to remove the underscores from the names of the 
> three ontology roots in GO:
>
>  name: biological_process	-->	name: biological process
>  name: cellular_component	-->	name: cellular component
>  name: molecular_function	-->	name: molecular function
>
> The reason for this change is consistency: at present these are the only term 
> names that contain underscores instead of spaces.
>
> The namespaces will be unaffected; i.e. they will still contain underscores.
>
> This will affect you if you are using the root name as a surrogate for the 
> ontology name (obo namespace) in a space-delimited file, or if you have any 
> sfotware that assumes that the root name is exactly the same as the ontology 
> name (note that OBO namespaces do not allow spaces, but in many ontologies, 
> including GO, spaces are allowed in term names).
>
> If there are no objections raised, we will make this change on Friday, June 
> 19, 2009.
>
> Thanks,
> Midori
> on behalf of GO's ontology developers
>
>
> ============================
> Midori A. Harris, Ph.D.
> GO Editor
> EMBL - EBI
> Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
> Hinxton
> Cambridge CB10 1SD UK
>
> Tel: +44 (0) 1223 494667
> Fax: +44 (0) 1223 494468
> Email: midori at ebi.ac.uk
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