[sc34wg3] Question on TNC / Montreal minutes

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| This is how we currently use merge-by-name. The autogeneration
| procedure builds subject identifiers from names by normalizing the
| name and inserting the resulting string into a URI template. The
| template chosen defines the namespace and it makes the merging much
| more effective than a simple merge-precise-strings.

* Marc de Graauw
| 
| This was the approach I originally chose for the Business Maps
| (albeit by hand, not automagically), but I dropped it because of the
| duplication I described. Do you decompose the URI to show the
| original name to the user, or do you take the duplication for
| granted and have the original name both as basename and as
| autogenerated PSI?

At the moment we take the duplication for granted, since we don't need
to worry about it for this application. In a future version we will
simply use a tolog query to implement the merging and not produce any
subject indicators at all. 

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| So you still want to tie it to particular scope? What about the
| argument that's been put forward against that, that people may use
| the same scope in different ways?
 
* Marc de Graauw
|
| If you use scopes such as 'dutch' and 'norwegian' I would recommend
| doing only TNC-based merges with other Topic Maps under human
| supervision (i.e. prompt the user when names clash).

I agree, but that is equivalent to removing the TNC from the standard.

| [...] 
| Now if one makes this the scoping topic, TNC-based merges won't
| happen with the scoping topic, only (safe) PSI-based merges. This
| ensures the entire namespace scoped by topic 'bizwords' inherits
| this safety, and one can do TNC-based merges within the 'bizwords'
| scope without problems. Since this is a controlled vocabulary,
| problems with names such as capitalization or whitespace are
| unlikely - just use the names as defined in the vocabulary.
| 
| Seems to me a sensible way to do name-based merges for controlled
| vocabularies.

I agree that asserting that "names must be unique within this scope"
is a rule for topic characteristic-based merging which makes perfect
sense in some applications, and users should have the ability to do
this, in one way or another.

Putting this in a higher layer than ISO 13250 I would be perfectly
happy with. Putting this in ISO 13250 I would find it very hard to
live with.

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