[sc34wg3] Question on TNC / Montreal minutes

[Bernard Vatant]

*Mary Nishikawa
> I do not know, but it does not make sense to me to have something that is
> suppose contain something that uniquely identifies the subject but there
> can be more than one of them; even if they are all in different scopes.
>
> I may be missing something here. Please show me an example where more than
> one identifier is needed.

Mary, I'm amazed of your position there. People's example comes to mind first, and Lars
Marius pointed it. Although it's very questionable if a person as identified by its
welfare number is really the same subject as e.g. the "same" (?) one defined by its pseudo
in a web community ... Are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde two names of the same subject, or
different subjects? ... all the book is about that question it seems.

Another examples in a field you know well ... you have a background in biochemistry,
right? Any organic compound has many names, each of them uniquely defining it in a given
nomenclature, plus trademarks ... a well-known example below (list not exhaustive)

aspirin
2-(acetyloxy)benzoic acid
2-acetoxybenzoic acid
acetyl salicylic acid
O-acetylsalicylic acid
acetol
acetophen
acetosal
A.S.A.
ASA
CAS 50-78-2

It seems it would make sense to apply the TNC apply to all those names in a chemical or
pharmacology topic map ... they all can be considered identifiers. Even in the same scope
...

Bernard