[sc34wg3] A new idea for the Topic Maps standard

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Steven R. Newcomb
| 
| [xxxML -> SAM or XTM mapping]
|
| The question that most interests me is: On what basis could such a
| mapping be made, and how would that basis be made explicit?

I've started on one for XFML, so I guess I can use that as an
example. At the moment the specification only consists of Java code,
but once rewritten to prose it will look very much like an informal
(and easier to read :) version of section 3 of N0328.
 
| It seems to me that Topic Maps are all about "merging".  Merging
| means creating a situation in which there is exactly one topic per
| subject -- i.e., recognizing when two different topics have the same
| subject, and then merging them.

This is done by mapping -id- attributes as well as the <connect>
element type to source locators and the <psi> element type to subject
identifiers. This maps XFML documents directly onto the merging
behaviour of the SAM and is, as far as I can tell, consistent with how
XFML is intended to work.
 
| So, when creating a mapping between different markup languages, we
| must begin by understanding the subjects that are expressed,
| referenced, and implied by the syntactic constructs that appear in
| instances of such languages.  We must also explicitly say how to
| recognize whenever instances of such markup languages are
| expressing, referencing, or implying the same subject.

Yep.

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Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
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