Re: [docbook-tc] Associations in an assembly

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

Scott Hudson <scott.hudson@pelco.com> writes:
> The original intent/design of the relationships structure was modeled after
> Topic Maps:

But...

> A relationship was intended to be the topic, the association was (obviously)
> the association, and instance was the occurrence. It seems that we have
> morphed this a bit to the association being more like the baseName in the
> following example:
>
> An example from the TM realm would be:
>   <topic id="w3c">
>     <instanceOf>
>       <topicRef xlink:href="#standards-body"/>
>     </instanceOf>
>     <baseName>
>       <baseNameString>World Wide Web Consortium</baseNameString>
>     </baseName>
>     <occurrence>
>       <instanceOf>
>         <topicRef xlink:href="#homepage"/>
>       </instanceOf>
>       <resourceRef xlink:href="http://www.w3.org"/>
>     </occurrence>
>   </topic>

This example doesn't seem to have an association. And our markup doesn't
seem to have baseName or occurrence. So I'm confused.

> I still think we want to describe the relationship (how the
> instance/occurences are related) via the association and use the
> relationship type as the base name?

But the type is an NMTOKEN attribute, that couldn't be used to
hold "World Wide Web Consortium" and besides putting human readable
content in attributes is wrong.

> I like the way that Lars Marius Garshol put it:
> "Topic Maps make information findable by giving every concept in the
> information its own identity and providing multiple redundant navigation
> paths through the information space. These paths are semantic, and all
> points on the way are clearly identified with names and types that tell you
> what they are. This means you always know where you are, which prompted
> Charles Goldfarb to call topic maps "the GPS of the information universe."

Sure, that sounds nice, but if we really want topic maps, why aren't
we using XTM markup?

> Topic maps also help by making it possible to relate together information
> that comes from different sources through merging and published subjects."

Do you have an assembly example that uses that?

> Perhaps our structure cannot provide all of this, but we also wanted this to
> be accessible and easy to create. Perhaps our examples should be updated to
> clearly describe the intent?

Hmm. So we've built a bridge halfway over the chasm?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | "Bother", said Pooh, as he deleted
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | his root directory.
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |

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