[sc34wg3] Questions on N0396: (14) name equality

[Steve Pepper]

At 20:34 22.04.2003 +0200, Jan Algermissen wrote:
>N0396 defines merging of names on the basis of string equality.
>Since string equality is said to be character by character equality,
>this means that an application cannot choose to do name merging
>on "fuzzy" equality (e.g. "Monster" and "monster"). Is that true?
>
>I suppose one could define an additional merging rule that merges
>topics on the basis of "fuzzy" name equality, yes?
>
>But I can never merge two name items that have a "fyzzy-euqal" string
>value, yes?
>
>So, even if I consider the two name items ["monster"] and ["Monster"] to be
>surrogates for the same subject (the same name), N0396 prohibits me from
>merging them, yes?

No. The SAM allows applications to define their own merging rules
over and above those required by the spec, so you are perfectly free
to perform normalization etc. before comparing names and performing a
merge. Just don't expect an out-of-the-box generic topic map processor
with no knowledge of your particular application requirements to do it
for you.

Steve

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