Re: [tm-pubsubj-comment] Relevance of dc:subject to PSIs

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

Steve Pepper wrote:

> At 15:10 25/04/02 +0000, Murray Altheim wrote:
> 
>>> To be honest I didn't know we were going to "all the trouble to make 
>>> XTM/PSI sets ISO 11179 compliant". I know next to nothing about ISO 
>>> 11179 (probably shouldn't admit that in public :) It's not that I 
>>> doubt you're right, but could you explain?
>>
>> I brought this up several times during the original XTM discussions
>> (though I'm not complaining at all about anyone not remembering that),
>> such that ISO 11179 is a metadata standard, and insofar as TMs provide
>> hooks into metadata or themselves contain metadata, there should IMO
>> be hooks in XTM for ISO 11179. These "hooks" can simply be PSIs.
> 
> So we are not, in fact, going to "all the trouble to make XTM/PSI sets 
> ISO 11179 compliant", but you think we should be. Fair enough. It would 
> be good if you could submit a proposal to that effect, perhaps including 
> wording to amend the requirements document, and indicate what exactly it 
> would mean in practice.


As you know, I ended my formal involvement with the PubSubj TM in order
to concentrate on my studies. I'm currently writing this email message
while not preparing (as I should be) for a meeting tomorrow. I simply
can't be required to create formal proposals for things that others
only have to suggest in email messages. That's a rather high and unfair
bar to push in my face.


> [ISO 11179 was a bit of a red herring with respect to the particular 
> discussion at hand, so let's not continue talking about it in this thread.]


There must be a name for when someone calls something a red herring in
order to provide a red herring to the argument at hand: if you're talking
about adding Dublin Core metadata into PSI sets, you're talking ISO 11179.
There's no difference in the sense that if you include (or should I say,
*properly* include, in the sense of machine-readable) references to
Dublin Core, you've automatically made it ISO 11179 compliant. My proposal
is no different in scope than the one of adding DC content to PSI sets.


>> Steve continues:
>>
>>> However, that's a side issue. My real problem is that I simply don't 
>>> understand how you think we would use dc:subject. That's why I asked 
>>> what a typical value might be.
>>>
>>> Let me try and make it easier for you to help me. In the following 
>>> example of a piece of text used as a PSI and employing DC semantics, 
>>> what might go in the spot marked "*****"?
>>>
>>>   Title:        Norway
>>>   Description:  Country in the Scandinavian peninsula bordering
>>>                 on Sweden, Finland, and Russia.
>>>   Identifier:   http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#no
>>>   Subject:      *****
>>>
>>> ...
>>
>> Let me give two concrete, valuable examples (both hypothetical):
>> ...
> 
> This discussion was triggered by my contention that dc:subject did not 
> have any relevance to PSIs, only to PSI sets. If you could have answered 
> the simple question posed above, I might have been in a position to 
> understand exactly what you intended with your "two concrete, valuable 
> examples". Unfortunately you didn't, so I'm still in the dark.


You did get an answer, quite a long one. You elided its contents in
your reply. I *thought* I was being quite explicit.

 > If the question above is not answerable for some reason, please say so.
 > Otherwise please tell me what might go in the spot marked "*****". That,
 > more than anything else, will help me understand why you think
 > dc:subject is relevant to PSIs.

The exact content of "*****" would be a subject indicator
string from a known vocabulary such as LoC, DDC, WorldCat, whatever.

It needs proper scoping to ISO 11179 in order for the *subject*, a
rather important part of ISO 11179 metadata, to be made explicitly
labelled.

As I thought I was clear in my last message, we're obviously
talking past each other, unproductively. In my last message I
provided an example of a hierarchy from Yahoo as a URN, with
the idea that PSI sets are potentially hierarchical, with drill-
down from one category (as a PSI) into what lies below it). If
you want there to be subject indicators for PSI sets, tell me
why you'd not want them for individual PSIs, since I've
demonstrated that any PSI could potentially be itself a class
under which other PSIs (in another map) reside. What is your
specific objection? Rather than to continue to force me to
justify my position endlessly, why *not* allow dc:subject on
a PSI?

Murray

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

      In the evening
      The rice leaves in the garden
      Rustle in the autumn wind
      That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu