[sc34wg3] Essence of the TMRM

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Patrick Durusau
| 
| What is NOT OK is to redefine 13250 in such a way that all subject
| proxies in all topic maps must use only certain standardized kinds
| of information as subject descriptors, and only certain ways of
| comparing such restricted kinds of information.  In other words, it
| is not OK for TMDM to re-state 13250 in such a way that, where 13250
| had left things wide open for Application designers to decide, 13250
| will now be a single, pre-designed Application.

Firstly, what the TMDM actually does is to define four standard
mechanisms for identifying subjects:

  - source locators, (the IDs from HyTM and XTM),

  - subject identifiers, (the subject indicator references from XTM,
    and, as you note, roughly equivalent to the subject descriptors of
    HyTM),

  - subject locators, (unnamed property from XTM), and,

  - unique characteristic types (new in TMDM).

However, TMDM does not preclude merging by means other than these, so
no freedom has been removed. Nothing that could be done using subject
descriptors is now impossible.

Secondly, let's assume your criticism is valid. Then what? What do you
want to do? We could of course add in a "subject descriptor" concept
and say that it can be used to merge topics on in any what whatsoever,
but if we did the standard would be no different from what it is now,
except it would have an undefined concept in it.
 
| Topic map designers should be as free as they were in ISO 13250 to
| declare any basis they wish to use to determine when two subject
| proxies represent the same subject.

We still have that, and you should know that we still have that. Why
do you write this? What's the point?

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