[sc34wg3] <mergeMap/> and security

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Lars Heuer
>
> I think the mergeMap element was designed to ease the _authoring_ of
> XML Topic Maps.

* Patrick Durusau
>
> ?? Well, I suppose if you think of merging as _authoring_ that is a  
> valid claim.

Merging and <mergeMap> are two different things. <mergeMap> is a  
syntactic construct, whereas merging is a process that's applied to  
TMDM instances.

Lars's point, which I fully agree with, is that <mergeMap> is only  
there as a convenience during authoring so that you can split your  
topic map up into multiple files. The presence or absence of this  
element does *nothing*else*. If we remove it, you can still merge  
topic maps every bit as much as you could before we removed it. The  
only thing you can't do is store a topic map in multiple XTM files in  
such a way that XTM processors will automatically read them into a  
single file.

So <mergeMap> really only is an authoring help. If you want to send  
someone your topic map, today you can choose between sending them

   a.xtm
     <mergeMap b.xtm>
     <mergeMap c.xtm>

or you can send them

   abc.xtm

which has everything already merged. For the recipient, the only  
difference is that dealing with one file is probably going to be a  
little easier, unless, of course, they want to do *authoring* on the  
*files*.

In my honest and not really terribly humble opinion, <mergeMap> is  
only interesting to people who deal with files. And we shouldn't  
really deal with files any more. (And I, as a TM vendor, have a  
responsibility to make it easier for people to get away from that.  
Which is why I do things like

   http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/15.html

.)

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