[sc34wg3] Clarifying N0323

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Lars Marius Garshol
| 
| Part 5 will provide an XML serialization of SAM instances that has the
| property that given any two SAM topic map items that are considered
| equal by the comparison rule for topic maps, they will serialize to
| XML documents that are identical byte-by-byte. The purpose of this is
| to facilitate automated conformance testing. This document will be
| described as a SAM->XML serialization, and will be an updated version
| of this document: 
| <URL: http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/cxtm.html > (Again,
| feedback on this would be welcome.)

* Anthony B. Coates
| 
| A similar serialisation for the RM would also be useful, e.g. to
| compare that two topic map engines (or two versions of the same
| engine) construct the same RM model from the same XTM input(s).

That assumes that we expect TM engines to actually construct RM
instances. As far as I know that is not the case.

And if it is conformance to the XTM syntax we wish to test we don't
need an additional specification for that, even if an implementation
does use the RM as its internal model. Parts 1, 3, and 5 of the
proposed 13250 describe what you are required to do, no matter what
your internal model looks like. (Yes, this means you can conform to
XTM without conforming to the SAM.)

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >