In message <199508141922.MAA20332 at violet.berkeley.edu> peterr at
violet.berkeley.edu writes:

When the IUBS International Commission for the Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants met last year at the Center for Urban Horticulture (University of Washington) Seattle, we did not formally discuss making the resulting Code available on the internet.

I do remember discussing the possibility informally with some attendees of the concurrent symposium on cultivated plants and I am sure there is a demand for this service.

I am not sure that the Code's publisher (soon to be announced) will want to see his investment potentially damaged by a reduction in sales of hard copy: codes of nomenclature are hardly "best-sellers" and do not demand large print runs.

There would also be technical difficulties in mounting an on-line internet version with the various typographical and pagination conventions used in a Code. There are some 200 pages in the new ICNCP - mostly taken up with invaluable appendices and we would need to look at WWW pages or something similar to show the full content.

I do not want to sound negative about issuing the Code on-line but I think much more work (and editor's time !!!!!) needs to be spent on the idea.

I imagine that the Commission would be receptive to the idea - after all, the Code needs to be distributed as widely as possible if it is to gain acceptance internationally and what better way that via internet. A suitable vehicle has to be found.

Here's an idea for the future: why not persuade IUBS (& IUMS for that matter) to provide WWW facilities for _all_ Codes? If this was done, _anyone_ with an interest in names would know that all the essential information is gathered together in one site.

If it became an IUBS/IUMS edict that all Codes were made available in this way, it might be easier to negotiate with the publishing community.

Over to you David Hawksworth (President of IUBS)! (Harmonizerman)