Re: [geolang-comment] First proposals for ISO 639 and 3166 available

[Murray Altheim <m.altheim@open.ac.uk>]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

> 
> * Lars Marius Garshol
> |
> | Basically whether the strings in question are human-oriented names
> | or labels for the subjects[1]. In my opinion these strings are
> | clearly occurrences rather than names. The country at the south tip
> | of Africa has names like 'South Africa' and 'Afrique du Sud', but
> | not like 'ZA', 'ZAF', or '710'.
> 
> * John Cowan
> |
> | Fair enough, but I still feel uncomfortable with saying that the
> | string "710" is an *occurrence* of the country denoted by "South
> | Africa", in the same sense that
> | http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html is an
> | occurrence of the (U.S.) Declaration of Independence.  I may be
> | misled by the use of the term "occurrence" here, though.
> 
> I think you are. XTM 1.0 says occurrences are
> 
>   "An occurrence is any information that is specified as being
>   relevant to a given subject."
> 
> while the SAM is slightly more formal and says
> 
>   "An occurrence is a relationship between an information resource and
>   a subject. The precise nature of this relationship is described by
>   the occurrence type, a subject which is attached to the
>   occurrence. Occurrences are generally used to attach information
>   resources to the subjects they are relevant to."
> 
> and by both of these definitions "710" is an occurrence of South
> Africa, given that it is an information resource relevant to the
> country South Africa.
  

That's quite a stretch of imagination and definition, and doesn't
make sense if you simply read it aloud.

"710" is not an information resource relevant to the country South
Africa, it is a coded name for that country, the context (or scope)
of that name being within the set of codes as published by the UN.

I think the XTM specification is starting to be read like the bible,
wherein one can seemingly prove anything. In this instance it should
be remembered that occurrences in the topic map paradigm are meant
to be out in the world, not in the map. Names of topics reside in
the map, and "710" is an alternate name for "South Africa", not an
occurrence of a resource about South Africa. If we begin populating
our topic maps' occurrences with things that should be in the map,
where will the "real" occurrences live? The clean separation between
map and territory mapped is lost.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

      One of the sad things about corporations is that despite
      their name they have no corpora, no body responsible for
      their actions. They are therefore free to do whatever is
      the will of those who control them, and can transmogrify
      as necessary, like ghosts, to thwart those who might try.
                                                          --ma