Re: [tm-pubsubj-comment] Should an XTM PSI set be usefully mergeable?

[Steve Pepper <pepper@ontopia.net>]

Thanks to a number of people for interesting comments on my strawman. I'm 
not sure I'm going to have time to engage in an intense debate on the 
various issues that have been raised before I leave for Seattle, but I 
would like to make a brief comment on one issue:

At 15:16 04/03/02 +0900, Mary Nishikawa wrote:
>These psi sets are the source for the subject identifier and indicators 
>that can be used in other maps. The psi TMs were not meant to be "merged" 
>with other maps. Is this the intention?

It certainly was the intention behind the design I chose. In my topic map 
PSI set the subjects of the topic elements that are intended to be used as 
subject indicators are the same as the subjects that are being indicated by 
those subject indicators: In other words the real-world subjects "Ontopia", 
"OKS", "Steve Pepper", etc.

Bernard suggested that the subjects of these topic elements could (should?) 
be things like "Published subject indicator for Ontopia", etc.

This is at odds with the way things were done in XTM 1.0 in core.xtm, 
language.xtm and country.xtm. It means that the topic maps containing the 
PSI sets cannot usefully be merged into ordinary applications in order to 
provide a base set of topics for a particular domain. I think it would be a 
pity to lose this capability.

Steve

--
Steve Pepper, Chief Executive Officer <pepper@ontopia.net>
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34/WG3  Editor, XTM (XML Topic Maps)
Ontopia AS, Waldemar Thranes gt. 98, N-0175 Oslo, Norway.
http://www.ontopia.net/ phone: +47-23233080 GSM: +47-90827246