[sc34wg3] CTM: Realistic use cases or toy examples?

[Xuân Baldauf]

Jaeho Lee wrote:
> [...]
> If the topic maps on the left column in the comparison list are written, for
> example in Korean, it would be really cryptic because it doesn't give enough
> clue to distinguish between associations and topics. 
> To me and probably to people in other cultures, the left column is HORRIFIC
> to read.
> Structural boundaries such as semi-colons are definitely needed for
> readability, IMHO, even in English.
>   
I think your point of cultural bias regarding what makes a language
readable is quite valid.  However, if there is only one person telling
some language instance is horrific to read, it is indistinguishable from
personal bias. ;-) So it would be nice if we could gather input from
more people with non-Germanic cultural background (i.e. Japanese?
Chinese? ).

Nevertheless, do you think, in your own opinion, that some
indentation-standard (though not mandatory, but customary) like

    john 
        isa singer 
        isa guitarist .

provides enough structure?

As Korean is mainly a Subject-Object-Verb-Language AFAIK, would

    john 
        singer isa
        guitarist isa .
      

look better?

I'm asking this to find out whether it is possible at all to maximize
CTM usability while being as far as culture-neutral as possible, or
whether there exist multiple usability maximums, one for each culture,
which compete against each other in such a way that it would be more
wise to just choose one of these usability maximums, even if this means
that culture-neutrality is grossly not achieved. If culture-neutrality
is not achievable (while achieving other good CTM properties) in
principle, there is not much point in argueing in favor of a specific
cultural POV, except when it comes to increasing some part of the CTM
userbase at cost of a smaller decrease at some other parts of the CTM
userbase (i.e. maybe we should have a lot of Chinese-like syntax if we
expect a lot of CTM authors being from a Chinese cultural background).


ciao,
Xuân.

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