[tmql-wg] Basename duplication ... ?

[Michael Chapman]

I have a basic  -though I hope not trivial / frequently answered-  question.
The question relates to TMs and not TMQL, but it has arisen in relation to 
what I feel is a fundamental point about TMQL(s). In trying to better express 
the latter, I did some research and found the following:

	"F.6.2 Topic name duplicate suppression
	"[If] basename B1 ... is equal to [basename B2] [in the same 
	scope] [a]  basename B3 is created which contains a base
	name equal to [basename B1] ... . All variants of B1 are added
	to B3. All variants of B2 are added to B3. ... B1 and B2 no
	longer exist." (ref.1)

and
	"It is allowed in topic maps for different topics to have the 
	same name[4], something that taxonomies and thesauri do 
	not allow. In practice this is something that occurs all the 
	time, and so it is important to support it. Many classification 
	systems avoid duplicate names by including some dis-
	ambiguation in the name itself. For example, Paris the city 
	and Paris the hero of Greek mythology may have been 
	differentiated as 'Paris (France)' and 'Paris (Greek myth.)'. In 
	topic maps this is not necessary, and the types, occurrences, 
	and associations of the topics will generally distinguish them 
	anyway."
	([footnote 4.] "You may have heard of the "topic naming 
	constraint", which is a rule in topic maps that only allows 
	duplicate names in certain limited cases. This rule has now 
	been removed from topic maps, so the statement is true.") 
	(ref.2)

So can one have two _different_ topics in the same (set of) topicmap(s) with 
the same basename?

Apologies again for being off topic, but it has (obvious) relevance to 
querying.

	Michael Chapman
	Culoz, France.

(1) "XML Topic Maps (XTM) 1.0." xtm1-20010806.html v 1.16 14:31:44 pepper at 
_"Informative"_ Annex F.
I have only now (as I type) noticed that this Annex is _not_ normative. Even 
though the (presumably Normative) section section 3.10 in the body of the 
document  requires merging "according to the _rules_ in Annex F" (emphasis 
added) and the Annex itself, declares (section F.1) "This annex describes the 
minimal requirements for a _conformant_ XTM processor. .. [a] processor is 
_required_ to ...." (emphases added).
(2) "Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! Making sense of it all"
Lars Marius Garshol  www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tm-vs-thesauri.html
?undated