[sc34wg3] Problem with wildcards

[Lars Heuer]

Hi Robert,

[...]
>> >   - import map
>> 
>> You mean import by your favorite Topic Maps engine? That works as
>> usual.

> No, I meant "map A 'imports' map B".

CTM provides the mergemap-directive and the include-directive. The
former works like the XTM 2.0 equivalent; the templates are invisible
for the master file.

The "import" directive *was* part of CTM in an earlier version. That
directive was meant to import only the templates of the referenced
source. No topics, no assocs, just templates. Additionally, it
provided the possibility to create a namespace for the imported
templates so it would have been possible to have the same template
names under different namespaces without name clashes (these are
possible with the include-directive). Anyway, the import-directive is
history.

[...]
>> ?captial generates always the item identifier: <geo.ctm#$__1.capital>
>> So, if you merge "norway.ctm" and "sweden.ctm", the topic "Oslo" and
>> the topic "Stockholm" will merge since they have the same item
>> identifier.

> And I would say "that is exactly how it should be". So if I use
> 'include' I get the ?capital to be locally active.

Yep, but the item identifier <geo.ctm#$__1.capital> screams for
trouble. If we have a CTM source which is used by many topic maps,
like the normative TMCL constraints source, all generated topics will
carry the same item identifier in all topic maps which include the
that source. And if you merge topic maps which have included that
common source you'll get ugly side effects, like the one from Lars
Marius' example where "Oslo" and "Stockholm" merge even if it was not
the intention of the author.

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