[sc34wg3] occurrence - basename fuzzy border

[Steve Pepper]

At 13:18 19.02.2003 +0000, Martin Bryan wrote:
>Since when is sorting relevant to occurrences?

First of all, variants are not just about sorting (or display). They are
about processing contexts in general. You may not have agreed with some
of the decisions taken in the design of XTM, but please don't let this
blind you to the fact that some useful generalizations *were* made and
have since been adopted. Variants is one of them.

Having said that, the answer to your question is: Sorting is relevant to
occurrences *all the time*! Whenever you want to display a list of
occurrences, the issue of sort order arises. Often there is no single
sort order that is always correct; the choice will depend on the context.
This could be handled by creating a topic for each resource and using
the "sort name" of that topic determine the sort order, but in some
situations this could be unnecessarily convoluted. Variant occurrences
would allow you to solve the same problem with less machinery.

The more important issue is that of display. Surely you agree that the
reasons for allowing multiple displayable versions of a name are
equally relevant for occurrences? Think merely of a graphic that may
exist in different notations, sizes, resolutions, colours, etc., each
of which is relevant in different contexts. How is an application to
choose between them?

Steve

--
Steve Pepper, Chief Executive Officer <pepper@ontopia.net>
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34/WG3  Editor, XTM (XML Topic Maps)
Ontopia AS, Waldemar Thranes gt. 98, N-0175 Oslo, Norway.
http://www.ontopia.net/ phone: +47-23233080 GSM: +47-90827246