[sc34wg3] TMDM minor suggestion

[Robert Barta]

Larsbot, Graham,

In the following minor nagging points re the current TMDM. Mostly
suggestions in respect to formulation.

I promise, I will never look at the doc again :-))

\rho

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This is against the version 2005-10-28:

- Page V:

  Not sure whether part 6 (and 7) are already on the table?

  http://y12web2.y12.doe.gov/sgml/sc34/document/0680.htm#is13250-6

- 4.1

  "The names of these properties..."

  to what does 'these' refer to?

- 4.1

  "...as associated type..." wording is using terms (assocation, type) in a
  different meaning than later. Might be a bit misleading.

- 4.1

  'null' is not defined yet.

- 4.1 3rd para

  suggest: .... are - strictly speaking - redun..

- 4.1 4th para

  suggest: ...infoset formalism for the purpose of illus...

- 4.3 Set:

  suggest: ...contain no two elements...

- 4.3 Null:

  suggest: consistent writing of Null (capitalized, different font?)

- 4.4 Datatypes

  "...only ... are strings and Null".

  I thought IRIs are now there and XML, as defined in the same section. I
  assume something else was planned to say here, but I do not quite get what.

- 5.1

  "Topic map constructs .......any number of item identifiers."

  suggest simplification/correction:

  "Every information item has at least one item identifer (see merging)".

- 5.1 Constraint
 
  "...to have strings..."

  correct to "values"?

  The constraint is confusing for me. First it is an error, if there are
  equal identifiers. Then, it could be, because of topics. But then they
  have to be merged, and then the fact of two equal identifiers does not
  exist anymore.

- 5.3.1 typos

  "....are statements, where_as the assignment__s of ...are not ..."

- 5.3.2

  "....represented by a topic _to a human being_."

  Suggest to drop the human thing. Have to work with so many aliens here.

- 5.3.2 Note 1

  "der_ference"

- 5.3.2 Note 1

  Suggest s/does not exist/is not accessible/

- 5.3.2 Example

  Suggest to add a trailing slash to the IRI

- 5.3.2

  "Note the uncertainty...."

  Suggest to make a NOTE.

- 5.3.3 Scope

  "..unconstrained scope.... is represented by the empty set"

  So be it, but what it means is that implementations have to
  be extremely careful when they handle scope: If they do set
  intersection operations (for whatever reason) and if they end
  up with an empty set then BEWARE(!) this all of a sudden would
  be unconstrained-scopishly true!

  Not overly natural, but I lack a better idea at the moment.

- 5.3.3 Scope Example

  Suggest comma after Davies

  Suggest to drop the third example. It did not tell me ANYTHING.
  It is a typical show-off. :-)

- 5.3.4 Reification Note 1

  Suggest to add a reference to it. Sowa?

- 5.3.4

  " ... to topic map constructs such as ...."

  Suggest to delete things after 'such as'.

- 5.3.4

  "is present in a structured form"

  Suggest: explicit form

  Suggest to drop everything after "that can be ....."

- 5.3.5 Topic properties

  ad equality rule: I would think that people may wonder how it might
  go about that two topics at some point share a common item identifier.
  This is probably only during merging, yes?

  I suspect that we should say something before that a TMDM instance
  is not necessarily 'completely merged' and that section X describes
  this process in detail.

  It is just that I had to sit back and wonder.

- 5.3.5 Topic properties

  Equality rule again.

  This seems to be the ONLY place where the name space of [subject identifiers] and
  that of [item identifiers] seem to interact. I am a bit puzzled by this.

- 5.3.5 Note 1

  Suggest "...should not be used" -> "must not be ...."

  Suggest to make the whole note only one paragraph.

- 5.4 topic names Note 1

  If a name is a special occurrence and an occurrence is a special association, should
  we not make this more explicit in some Annex?

- 5.4 topic names [ reifier ]

  Suggest "if present" -> "if not NULL"


- 5.6 Occurrence

  I have a question: if I create an occurrence of
  type 'homepage' for a topic 'robert'

  robert
  oc (homepage): http://nowhere.com/

  Is then 'homepage' automatically, implicitely a subtype
  of 'psi.topicmaps.org/occurrence' ?
  
- 6.1 Merging

  "...but the rules given here are insufficient...."

  Sounds a bit cryptic. To explain this more, one would have
  to say something about 'redundancy'. Maybe drop everything
  after "but"?

  "Any change..."

  If TMDM instances are allowed to be 'redundant', then why
  is the 'change' necessary to trigger merging?

  Suggest: "..a set" -> "any set"

6.2 ad 1)

  Is it necessary to say "Create a new topic item with item identifier C"?

6.2 ad 8)

  I note that the original topics are not removed?

6.3 ad 6)

  Suggest:

  "..non-null values, the _respective_ topic items shall..."

  Suggest:

  "..from the merged set _is then_ the value...."

7.2

  Suggest: "topic type is know _to be_ an instance .."

7.2

  Is the note that type-instance is not transitive any relevant
  to TMDM? (Same question for subtype-supertype transitivity).

7.3

  Suggest: "....relationship implies ..."

7.5

  Most of the Usage sections are empty. Looks a bit odd.