[sc34wg3] Namespaces?

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Patrick Durusau
| 
| Several recent comments have likened the TNC to "namespaces" and I
| was wondering if some of other experiences with namespaces might be
| relevant to this dicussion?
| 
| 1. Disambiguate terms (the most common use in XML)
| 
| 2. Could be used to support re-naming (mapping multiple names one to
|    the other in a namespace, not supported in XML)

Yes, I think topic maps can do all of these, with or without the TNC.
It basically follows from having identities (topics) with names and
the ability to annotate the names with the contexts in which they are
valid. 
 
| 3. Could be used to support inheritance (multiple?) in namespaces (not
|    limited to inheritance in #4?)

Here you lost me. What did you mean by this?
 
| 4. Could have structure that denotes higher levels (like Java classes
|    names, high to low) (Is this the structure that Ann Wrightson
|    sensed was missing from scope? Ann?)

Could be; I must say I don't know what you are thinking of.
 
| I think that we have generally been talking about #1 above. 

Yep.

| Are we at a point where we can meaningfully discuss 2-4?

Certainly #2 makes a lot of sense, and we've used topic maps for this
in some cases. 

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