[sc34wg3] Questions on N0396: (13) what is the [type] of a name?

[Steve Pepper]

At 20:23 22.04.2003 +0200, Jan Algermissen wrote:
>what is the meaning of the [type] property on the
>name item? Can you give me some examples of name types?

It specifies the class to which the name belongs, just as
[type] properties on occurrence, association and association
role items do.

It was introduced at the Baltimore meeting in order to solve
the issue of the topic-naming-constraint. As such it is an
extension to XTM (note that <baseName> elements can now have
<instanceOf> subelements*), but one that was deemed to be
necessary in order to fix the TNC bug.

See
   http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/models/topic_complete.jsp?tm=tm-standards.xtm&id=293

for more details.

An example might be

<topic id="germany">
   <baseName>
     <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#iso3166-code"/></instanceOf>
     <baseNameString>de</baseNameString>
   </baseName>
</topic>

The topic with the ID "iso3166-code" represents a class of names.

If that topic is an instance of the class
   http://psi.topicmaps.org/sam/1.0/#unique-characteristic

topics with names of that type will be subject to name-based merging.

Note that "unique-characteristic" is similar in some ways to the RM's
SIDPs...

Steve

*) See http://www.isotopicmaps.org/sam/sam-xtm/#sect-dtd

--
Steve Pepper, Ontopian
http://www.ontopia.net
DUMUS DELENDUM EST