[sc34wg3] Whitespace agnosticism in CTM and descendants

[Lars Heuer]

Hi Xuân,

[...]
> '=' is not that unobvious. (Athough we here define an ordered list
> syntactically, a mapping semantically, and not really an equality. Yet,
> "parenting(mother=Diana,father=Charles,child=William)" reads verbally
> quite nicely if '=' is read as "is": "A parenting association, where the
[...]

But using "=" would violate our CTM-conception "type COLON value" for
Topic Maps constructs.
Nearly all Topic Maps constructs use this schema.
I.e. names:
     - nametype: string

Occurrences:
     occ-type: string | integer | decimal | ...

Roles
     role-type: player


Additionally, the "=" is already used as prefix for subject locators.

    = http://www.example.org/  # The subject is the website


[...]
>>     a(x:y:z)
>>
>> there is actually NO ambiguity:
>>
>>   - if x is NOT a prefix, then is MUST be topic id, so it reads
>>
>>     x : y:z
>>
>>   - if x is a prefix, so it MUST read
>>
>>     x:y : z
>>
>> And prefixes MUST be declared before they are used.
>>
>> Maybe the editors may analyze similar situations, but if it is true,
>> what I suspect here, then the 'whitespace rule' could go away
>> completely.

I agree, that we need a solution here, if CTM accepts x:y:z or not.
But I am afraid, that the colon is fixed in this stage of CTM. As
said, the editors do not plan to change the delimiter, unless the
committee forces the editors to do so. The arguments you brought up,
aren't new and were discussed lengthly in the meetings.

Anyway, thanks for your comments.

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
http://www.semagia.com