Requirements oddity

[Patrick Durusau <Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org>]

Greetings,

Still wading along in the draft proposal and noticed that the second 
requirement for PSIs reads:

"A Published Subject Identifier must resolve to a human-interpretable 
Published Subject Indicator."

Struck me as odd while writing because the second recommendation reads:

"A Published Subject Indicator may provide human-readable metadata about 
itself."

But the "metadata" isn't really about "itself" is it?

That is to say, the only "data" in a Published Subject is the unique URI 
that forms its Published Subject Indentifier. The entirety of a 
Published Subject Indicator is "metadata" about the Published Subject 
Identifier. Together, that is Published Subject Identifier + Published 
Subject Indicator, form a Published Subject. Neither without the other 
is enough to have a Published Subject.

I would leave the requirement as stated, particularly since "resolve" is 
left undefined, thereby allowing the full range of what are called 
subject descriptors in ISO 13250 to be Published Subject Identifiers.

I would however drop the second recommendation as confused. A Published 
Subject Indicator is metadata (already constrained to be 
human-interpretable) about the Published Subject Identifier.

Actually I think we need to revisit the entire document and re-write 
using Published Subject, Published Subject Identifier and Published 
Subject Indicator, written out in full and limit the use of PSI as 
shorthand for Published Subject. Not a happy circumstance but would 
accord with our usage up to this point.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!