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Subject: Re: [tm-pubsubj-comment] Tuesday conference



* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| So the requirement that you want satisfied is that it should be
| possible to get at the core published subject assertions[1] from the
| published subject identifier (URI)?

* Thomas Bandholtz
| 
| Exactly - without any statement about [1] currently.
| I would not introduce the term "published subject assertions".
| ISO 13250 clearly defines "topic topic characteristics" this is all
| we need.  We should not start with Adam & Eve again and again.

That's a valid point.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Instead, we could define conventions for how HTML/XHTML documents
| can refer to the XTM/RDF documents that contain the published
| subject assertions.
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| This will not work for a machine. There must be a clear formal
| syntax.

There could be. We could define a value for the 'rel' attribute of the
HTML <link> element that would let HTML documents link to the formal
syntax in a clearly defined way.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| I am not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that you would
| like to see another topic map syntax in addition to HyTM and XTM? Or
| you saying that we should agree to always let the URI resolve to
| either HyTM or XTM?
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| I have discussed this a little in
| http://195.14.240.28/123/03-05-03.html#S8.1 

From what you say there it sounds as though you want to ditch both
HyTM and XTM and use some other format. Why would you want to do that?
The paper gives no hint of what your reasons for rejecting XTM are.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| If we choose to be more flexible we can say:
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| We should not be flexible, we should be clear.

There's no contradiction between the two.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  - if the URI resolves to XTM, that's fine,
| 
|  - if the URI resolves to HyTM, that's OK,
| 
|  - if the URI resolves to HTML, the HTML document can declare multiple
|    alternative topic map syntaxes, and
| 
|  - if the URI resolves to something else, that's fine, but you won't
|    necessarily be able to get at the published subject assertions.
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| If the URI resolves to a Topic Map, that's great!

That's not very clear, is it? :)

The recommendations needs to recommend a finite set of topic map
syntaxes, otherwise this will be too difficult for implementors to
support.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| This is a misunderstanding, but a common one. When you publish
| something on a web server *you* decide how the URIs map to resources,
| so it's fully possible to avoid this problem. In any case, this is not
| a problem with published subjects, but a general URI management
| problem.  
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| Right, a "general URI management problem". We have discussed this in
| the thread named "referring to a topic fromoutside a TM ". Try
| fragment identifiers against XML with any relevant tool. This will
| not work. Neither in IE6, nor in Java Servlet. From inside a Java
| Servlet you cannot access what comes behind the #. This is not a
| bug.

OK, but so what? What is the practical significance of this? How and
why does it affect published subjects?
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| ... I don't this is a very good idea, actually. Extracting topic map
| fragments is not easy,
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| Why?

OK. Let's say that you want the topic "Puccini" from the Italian Opera
topic map. What should we send you? "Puccini" is an instance of
"composer", it has names in the scopes "normal form" and "short name";
which of those topics should we send you, and how much of them? And
how many of the topics needed to understand *their* characteristics
should we send you? 

The same of course applies to occurrence types, occurrence scopes,
association types, association role types, and association scopes, but
without complicating this picture to any great extent.

Associations, however, are a different story. Do we send you the
topics playing the other roles in the association? If so, how much of
them? 

Reification also enters the picture, but I think you see where I am
going.

Of course, it is fully possible to define lots of policies for what
information to include and what to leave out, but I am not at all
certain that it is possible to come up with a single policy that will
work in *all* situations.

And, most of all, I am not at all sure that this is in any way
relevant to published subjects.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| and if we require this of people it would mean that there's a high
| technology threshold for people to be able to publish subjects.
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| Did you ever think about the threshold we produce by trying to be
| "flexible" ?

What do you mean?
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| I also don't think fragments are that much more useful than the full
| topic map.
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| Associations are part of "topic charasteristics". (Now and then all
| of us should re-read good old ISO13250). If I include associations,
| I need to include the associated topics as well. No need to include
| the whole TM.

If you apply that algorithm recursively most likely you *will* end up
with the whole topic map, or at least 90% or more of it.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Do you mean "the XTM syntax should be made more human-readable"? 
 
* Thomas Bandholtz
|
| Yes.

Fair enough. How, and why?

I feel that this discussion is becoming less and less useful, however.
We seem to be drifting away from the subjects Thomas originally posted
about, and those seemed to me to be the important ones. I am not sure
how to fix this, however. 

Thomas, could you post a new explanation of what your dissatisfaction
with the PubSubj TC work consists of, so that we can either explain
why you are wrong or understand where we are wrong? And please explain
your points clearly, because I have great problems understanding what
it is you mean and what the rationale for your criticisms is. (This is
just a suggestion, though. If you have better suggestions for how to
get back on track I am all ears.)
 
-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >



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