[sc34wg3] Modularization

[Kal Ahmed]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 09:23, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
>  
> | On the one hand, one of the problems I see with the SAM as currently
> | defined is that it's too precise in the sense that it implies a
> | given type of API.
> 
> What do you mean by this? Do you think it should be changed to allow
> other "types of API", whatever that may mean? Do you think we
> shouldn't have a precise definition? Come on, Michel! Obviously there
> is something you want to say. Please say it!
> 
> | I do not deny the interest of having had to do so in order to
> | understand what we are doing and we have to be very grateful to the
> | current implementers who are sharing technical information about the
> | way they have implemented things. This is extremely useful but we
> | should use this to build the concepts in a way that takes some
> | distance from what has been made available.
> 
> You've got this backwards. Current implementations are the way they
> are because XTM 1.0/ISO 13250:2000 required them to be that way. The
> SAM simply reflects what was in XTM 1.0/ISO 13250:2000, not how
> implementors want other implementors to do things.
>  

In fact I do not agree with the assertion that "all implementations are
the same". TM4J, for example exposes the merging of topics as the
aggregation of multiple Topic objects, rather than taking the TMAPI
approach of one Topic object per subject. I am sure that the way in
which TM4J represents scope is different from other implementations too.
What all implementations do have in common is that there are
representations of the topics, topic characteristics, associations and
scope, and it is the semantics of these constructs that the topic map
standard must concern itself with.

Cheers,

Kal