[sc34wg3] Removing added scope from <mergeMap>

[Graham Moore]

I dont think that Lars Marius and I disagree with the value of being able to
attribute accountability or Scope when merging topic maps. 

The decision for removing it from the syntax was two fold:

1. we really were aiming for an interchange syntax and not an authoring
syntax and to this end were looking to remove constructs that 'did stuff'.
We wanted to remove mergemap altogether.

2. In general we wanted all processing and semantics to be external of the
representation syntax, i.e. Applications or external declaration language.
We were thinking about a family of syntaxes where interchange was strickly
representation.

I want clean lines of distinction, modularisation, of the models and
syntaxes in the ISO Topic Maps family of standards. MergeMap is not
something I dont want, it is something that doesn't belong in the
representation syntax.

Cheers, 

Graham

-----Original Message-----
From: sc34wg3-admin@isotopicmaps.org [mailto:sc34wg3-admin@isotopicmaps.org]
On Behalf Of Murray Altheim
Sent: 13 January 2006 21:37
To: sc34wg3@isotopicmaps.org
Cc: Kal Ahmed
Subject: Re: [sc34wg3] Removing added scope from <mergeMap>

Mason, James David (MXM) wrote:
> I'm with Kal and Steve on this. 
> 
> There are times when I use <mergemap> as a simple file include like 
> the troff ".so" directive, when I am trying to do something with my 
> file modularization. Then the results of merging probably don't need 
> to know where they came from.
> 
> But one of the original goals of developing TMs was merging indices. 
> Then it's of critical importance to know where things came from. It's 
> all part of scholarly accountability to know the provenance of 
> concepts. So if merging destroys that, it destroys one of the main 
> reasons for having TMs in the first place.
> 
> (If you don't think knowing the sources for things is important, go 
> look at the recent controversy over the lies inserted into the 
> Wikipedia article on John Siegenthaler. I've known John since back in 
> the '60s, and I knew those things were wrong, but lots of people 
> couldn't have known that someone had been messing with his bio.)
> 
> Jim Mason

I believe I also responded to this issue earlier as regards requirements for
modularization (which to head off any remarks, has *nothing* to do with
authoring and all to do with distribution of interchange files). Scope on
merging is an important requirement for modularization for reasons very
similar to those cited by Jim above, i.e., being able to merge components of
a working ontology but be able to separate those components following an
edit (such as being able to extract the core and middle ontologies after
editing a lower ontology, where in order to even load the lower the rest
must be loaded).

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                          http://www.altheim.com/murray/
Strategic Systems Development Manager
The Open University Library and Learning Resources Centre
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

      Short of taking the current president of the United States
      by the scruff of the neck and dunking his head deep into the
      rapidly melting Arctic ice cap, what more did the Earth need
      to do to make someone listen to its cry for help?
                                 -- Simon Schama, The Story So Far
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1675173,00.html

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