Name matching in GUI

[Former user]

Hello, I am trying to use the Taxonome GUI (Windows machine) for synonyms matching, and having some problems. Ihave loaded a synonymy CSV and tried to perform a few matches. However, only perfect matches are performed, while any slight change to the search results in no match. I tried to configure Taxonome, following the instructions here: http://taxonome.bitbucket.org/config.html but could not find the taxonome.cfg file (or any other cfg file) in the specified directory. Why is the file not there and how can the matching parameters be changed ? Thanks a lot !

[Thomas Kluyver]

Hi there! Can you post a copy of the synonymy CSV you're using, so that I can investigate it?

Taxonome doesn't create the config file by default, so that later versions can have different defaults. If you create the file yourself, any values you specify should override the defaults. I might add a GUI for this in a later version.

[Former user]

Hi, and thanks for the reply. Here is a small sample of my synonymy CSV, which is an edited version of Plantlist data:
Name,Synonym
Asparagus abyssinicus,Asparagus flagellaris
Asparagus acerosus,Asparagus acerosus
Asparagus acerosus,Asparagus racemosus
Asparagus acicularis,Asparagus acicularis
Asparagus acocksii,Asparagus acocksii
Asparagus aculeatus,Asparagus aethiopicus
Thanks !

[Thomas Kluyver]

I've just tested with that data, matching these names (all but one mis-spelled) to it:

Name
Asparagus acerosus
Asparagus acerosum
Asparagus ethiopicus
Asparagus flagelaris

It correctly matched all of those. So, my suggestions are:

• First, check that it's loading the synonyms correctly. If you click on a species with synonyms (e.g. A. acerosus), the bottom-right panel should show its name and synonyms.

• If that works, can you run the matching with the option 'Full log of matching process' turned on, and send me a copy of the CSV file that produces?

[Former user]

Thanks. I now understand why it happened - I used the search option on the dataset instead of using the 'match taxa by name' option. Now it seems to work fine. Thank you !

[Thomas Kluyver]

Ah, OK. I can see how that would be confusing - perhaps the search box should do the same fuzzy matching that matching does.