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Date:         Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:19:17 +0000
From: Andy Powell <a.powell@UKOLN.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Vocabulary Encoding Scheme vs Syntax Encoding Scheme
To: DC-USAGE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
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The rule I'm using is...

If it is possible to enumerate a finite list of all possible
valid values then the encoding scheme is a 'vocabulary'.

Box             Syntax
DCMIType        Vocabulary
DDC             Vocabulary
IMT             Vocabulary
ISO3166         Vocabulary
ISO639-2        Vocabulary
LCC             Vocabulary
LCSH            Vocabulary
MESH            Vocabulary
Period          Syntax
Point           Syntax
RFC1766         Vocabulary [1]
RFC3066         Vocabulary
TGN             Vocabulary
UDC             Vocabulary
URI             Syntax
W3CDTF          Syntax

Things like RFC1766 [1] look a bit like 'syntaxes' because
they are made up of component parts - but the fact that you can
enumerate a list of all possible valid values means (I think)
that they are 'vocabularies'.

[1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#RFC1766