Sara, I have taken your classification and restructured it into a language called Backus-Naur that is used to describe languages, descriptions, sentences, etc. I have taken the liberty of adding a few descriptions, but this is basically yours. It looks cumbersome but it isn't too bad. It is a way to check to see if a sentence belongs to a language, or in our case, does a description of a dial have an un ambiguous meaning in our language?
Form of the language: [] means an optional item {} means a required item ... means an item can be repeated | means is one of many choices <> means an item name + means this item is assume if nothing is specified A dial is describe by the following sentence: SUNDIALS IS [<mobility>] [<location>] [<sun-motion>] [<form>] [<historical type>] [<face orientation>] [<gnomon type>] [<hours>] [<furniture>] [<correction> ] where <mobility> is portable | fixed+ <form> is [cannon | compass | floating | polyhedral | diptych | magnetic | ring]... <location> is universal | independent* <sun-motion> is [hour angle+ | azimuth | altitude]... <historical type> is Butterfield | Oughtred | Regiomontanus | de Rojas | Augsburg <face orientation> is horizontal+ | vertical | declining | inclining | equatorial | polar <gnomon type> is string | pin | rod | garden+** <hours> is SHOWING {Babylonian | Italian | local | mean}... HOURS <furniture is WITH {LINES|MARKS} {OF|FOR} {seasons | Dates | declension | hours till dark }... <correction> is CORRECTED FOR {eot | longitude | daylight Savings time}... Notes: * Independent means there are no adjustments for new locations, universal implies adjustments ** traditional triangle shape of horizontal dials + Default if not mentioned A simple example would be "Sundial" which would mean a fixed hour angle, horizontal, garden gnomon dial. A very complex example would be a "fixed universal azimuth polyhedral Butterfield type string dial, SHOWING Babylonian and Italian HOURS, WITH LINE OF declension and a MARK FOR my dad's birthday, CORRECTED FOR EOT and DST". But that type of dial needs a complex descriptions. The question then is: Can all descriptions of dials fit into the language above, and still produce intelligent sounding names? I welcome all to test out the descriptions of various dials and see if they fit. I'm sure there would have to be some additions and tweaking of attributes, but it's a start. ++ron