[sc34wg3] SAM-issue term-scope-def

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Jan Algermissen
| 
| This is what I referred to when I said that basenames have the
| semantics of unambiguity. The association between a topic and its
| basename provides more than just a name (or 'mere name' or 'label')
| for the topic, it provides an unambiguous name (together with the
| namespace (scope) of course).

Careful, now. This is not an "association," as defined by ISO 13250 or
XTM 1.0 (the two specs you referenced). The Reference Model doesn't
use that term, either, and I think it is right not to do so.

Basically, you can choose to use RM terminology (strange in a SAM
discussion, but possible) and say "assertion" or use SAM/13250/XTM
terminology and say "base name assignment".
 
| So, my understanding of a scoped basename is, that it serves as an
| unambiguous name when the scope applies and that it does not serve
| as such when the scope does not apply. In other words, the scope
| expresses the extend of validity of the unambiguity of the name, not
| the extend of validity of the name alone.

I agree with this (in contexts where the TNC applies).
 
| The fact that existing topic map markup languages provide 

You make it sound as if we are about to create new, and radically
different, topic map models. That is not the case.

| a convenient way to express topic-basename-characteristics (such as
| the <baseName> element in XTM) does not prevent you from defining
| other association types in order to express
| topic-name-characteristics that do NOT have the semantics of
| unambiguity (and could therefore be used to avoid
| topic-naming-contraint-based merges if you do want to use ambigous
| names, such as acronyms for example)

We're talking about the SAM here, and there is no way to do this
within the SAM.

| You could call your association type 'topic-label' and create
| associations of that type between your topics and the strings that
| are the labels.

Unfortunately, there is no way to reliably assert that a topic
represents a particular string (issue strings-as-subjects), and this
solution is in any case unacceptable, since it is heavyweight and not
standardized.

(This is beginning to sound like a discussion of the TNC. Let's either
put that off until we have the TNC position papers, or do it in a
different thread.)

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >