[sc34wg3] Subjects, role players, and user-defined association types

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Martin Bryan
|
| Now Lars, surely you expect me to bite when you responded to Sam's
| [...]

I don't bait, Martin.
 
| Given your following set of e-mails with Conal Tuohy on
| transitivity, reflexivity, etc, I would have thought that even you
| could see that these constraints need to be recorded as facets of
| topics and their components, and not by always inventing new topics
| and associations that just control one or two minor aspects of topic
| map navigation.

We really do see this from opposite sides. My understanding was that
facets applied to resources, not to topics. And even if they did apply
to topics, I don't see how they could do that without becoming another
kind of association.

The model has a lot of different constructs in it already. The more we
can throw out and replace by published subjects, the better. A complex
model makes implementation harder, and making implementation harder
means there will be fewer implementations, and fewer implementations
means, well, fewer users.

The trick is drawing the line between what's necessary and what's
not. If you think facets are on the right side of the line I'd like to
know why.
 
| For example, I might want to say that a particular base name is
| valid in English and French by using the proper XML statement
| xml:lang="en fr". This would create two name/value assertions,
| xml:lang<-->en and xml:lang<-->fr with the assertion type of
| valid-in-language which the base name object would then point using
| two basename-facet assertions. (OK, I know you are all going to say
| I should not follow the W3C rules for defining language, and should
| do name language specification using separate topics and
| associations, but I'm supposed to promote the proper use of existing
| standards before inventing new ones!) 

Martin, I know this is what you think, but that's not much help. The
question is: *why* do you think this is right? *Why* should we change
our point of view to follow you? We've spent years working to get to
the understanding of topic maps we have now. Surely you won't expect
us to abandon it just because you tell us it's wrong? The least you
can do is to tell us *why* it is wrong.

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