[sc34wg3] Reification or Representation?

[Robert Barta]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 08:36:20PM +0200, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> | It would seem likely, though this point is not perfectly clear to
> | me, that Lars et al believe that what such reified topics have as
> | their subject is not some part of the topic map tree itself, but the
> | nodes "identified" by that particular subset of the topic map tree.
> 
> Well, almost. The language may be a little confusing, but what's
> intended is that if the topic reifies an employed-by association
> between me and Ontopia the subject of the topic is my employment at
> Ontopia (ie, the subject is *not* the association, it's the real-world
> (yes, Bernard :) thing it represents).

Lars,

I think the confusion is very understandable. Just as an idea, maybe
we could be explicit and say

  "We have two universes: the real (cough) out there and the map."

  "If we create a topic in a map which should capture the essence of
   a thing-out-there, then we call this 'direct reification'".

  "If we need to reify an association-out-there, then we create a
   topic which refers to the association inside the map. This is
   called 'indirect reification'".

Just a thought.

\rho