[sc34wg3] Almost arbitrary markup in resourceData

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Graham Moore
|=20
| When I think about topic maps the last thing I ever really consider
| is the syntax, the XTM.=20

I think this is worth repeating. My experience is identical. Very
rarely do I look at the XTM or even think about it. I use it almost
every day, but to me, XTM is not topic maps, and topic maps definitely
are not XTM.

I guess this is similar to what Jim said: "So far as what has been
approved by the ISO/IEC process is concerned, XTM is not synonymous
with Topic Maps."

It also seems to me that when people actually do interchange topic
maps in the future the most common scenarios will not be shipping XTM
files around, but something much more like what Graham described in
Montr=E9al, which I guess I could call Topic Map Services.  That is, XTM
fragments interchanged as part of application interactions. (Which, of
course, is not to say that people won't ship XTM files around like
they always used to. Because they will.)

| In XTM we don't restrict the kinds of things that occurrences can
| reference, nor do we limit the resources that can be represented by
| topics. For me then, conceptually, it follows that having any
| arbitrary markup in there is no big deal.

Other people have echoed this, and I'd like to chime in and do the
same.  For me, this is the principle that makes this OK. Yes, there
are concerns, and there are costs. But there appears to be a real user
need here, doing this does not break any principle that I believe in,
and the costs seem manageable to me. (I'm not looking forward to
adding support for this, but we can do it.)

--=20
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >