[sc34wg3] Must names have a type?

[Lars Marius Garshol]

Steve pointed out that <instanceOf> is required everywhere it can  
occur, except on topic names. This was actually not an omission, even  
if I agree that it does appear to violate a general principle.

The reasoning goes roughly like this:

  - Nearly all occurrences, associations, and roles have types, but
    most topic names do not. Do we really want to force people to
    specify the TMDM default name type for most of their names?

  - For all topics in a topic map to have a default name is one of the
    attractive features of Topic Maps, but few people really appreciate
    and exploit this fully. If they are required to specify a type for
    their topic names chances are that quite a few of them will come up
    with their own default name type, which takes away this benefit.

  - Names didn't use to have types at all; now in the space of a few
    months the type suddenly becomes required. This may take some
    adjusting to...

I'd be very interested to get feedback on this, since this is an  
issue that could do with more discussion.

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