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Subject: [tm-pubsubj] Jan 29 agenda: Documentation formats


Regarding "6. Published subjects documentation format(s)", Bernard asks the 
following questions:

A. Should TC recommend a single specific format for published subjects 
documentation? If yes, which one?
B. If no, should we list recommended formats? If yes, which ones?

We *have to* agree on A (IMO, the answer is "no" ...)
We should agree on B (IMO, the answer is "yes" ...)

Lars Marius and I have discussed this and we have the following position:

(a) We should not *mandate* a particular format for published subject 
indicators and their supporting documentation. Any addressable resource can 
be a subject indicator; it should also be able to be a published subject 
indicator. This would simply involve making known the URL of the resource 
and the fact that it is intended to provide indication of the identity of a 
subject.

(b) Having said that, we should actively encourage and promote 
("recommend") the use of topic maps to define published subjects, because 
of the advantages (to be enumerated) that this brings.

(c) We should describe best practices for both eventualities. For example, 
we will say that the published subject indicator should explicitly state 
which URL is to be used as the published subject identifier. (This is done 
in the existing core.xtm, but not the country.xtm or language.xtm.)

---

The way we would like to publish our PSIs is as follows:

(1) We would create a topic map covering a set of subjects within a certain 
domain, e.g. i18n. Let's call this topic map i18n.xtm.

(2) There would be a topic for each published subject. These topics *are* 
the published subject indicators. One subject might be the script "Abugida".

(3) Each topic would have at least one name and an internal occurrence 
whose type is defined by a PSI (defined by this TC!) that contains the 
canonical URL of the published subject indicator (i.e. the topic), e.g.

    <topic id="abugida">
      <subjectIdentity>
        <subjectIndicatorRef
          xlink:href="http://psi.ontopia.net/i18n/i18n.xtm#abugida"/>
      </subjectIdentity>
      <baseName>
        <baseNameString>Abugida</baseNameString>
      </baseName>
      <occurrence>
        <instanceOf>
          <subjectIndicatorRef
            xlink:href="http://psi.oasis-open.org/pubsubj/pubsubj.xtm#psidef"/>
        </instanceOf>
        <resourceData>A type of writing system in which each character 
represents a
        consonant followed by a specific vowel, and the other vowels are 
represented
       by a consistent modification of the consonant symbols.</resourceData>
      </occurrence>
    </topic>

The topic map in this case has the location 
http://psi.ontopia.net/i18n/i18n.xtm; the topic has the ID "abugida", and 
the published subject identifier is therefore 
http://psi.ontopia.net/i18n/i18n.xtm#abugida.

(4) The topic map will also include metadata about the PSI set.

(5) In addition to this topic map we would create an HTML file, located at 
http://psi.ontopia.net/i18n/index.html that contained a browser-friendly 
rendition of the subject indicators and the metadata.

Usages such as

  - "psi" as the first component of the host name in a PSI,
  - one directory ("foo") per published subject documentation set,
  - naming the topic map "foo.xtm" and placing it in the directory "foo",
  - including a browsable rendition of that topic map as index.html,
  - etc.

are all examples of the kind of recommendations for best practice 
conventions that we could include.

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



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