RE: [xtm-wg] parallel development of syntax and concept models

[Jim Farrugia <jim@spatial.maine.edu>]

Michel and others,

I'd like to contribute some questions to this discussion.  They may
seem elementary and basic to those of you in the know, but I hope
that they promote understanding among the rest of us, and help to more 
broadly disseminate the key ideas of Topic Maps.

I am new to the area, but I hope my comments show the kinds of questions
future users might have.

Here goes....

>The Hyperlink Perspective
>=====================
>
>The "Hyperlink perspective", also (abusively) called "syntax", says
>basically: Topic maps are made of 2 hyperlinks: one is called topic,
>another one is called an association. The topic hyperlink has a
>supplementary property: it has name(s). The association hyperlink has
>a supplementary constraint: it can only connect topic links. Both
>hyperlinks can be scoped. That's basically it.

There is an initial confusion I have when I hear both "topic" and "association"
described as "links".  It seems more natural that the word "topic" should
refer to, say, a node or "that which is connected to another topic by a link".
That is, it seems to be a place, a destination, a thing that can be connected,
rather than a link between things that can be connected.  On the other hand,
it seems to make good sense that an association is thought of more
as a link than as that which is to be linked.

Can someone please help clarify this for me?  It really does seem
that "topic" does somehow have a dual meaning - as an endpoint of
a link, or as a link itself.

>The Foundation Perspective
>=======================
>
>The "Foundation perspective", also (abusively) called "conceptual
>model", considers instead of hyperlinks the individual objects
>connected together as "binding points", the connector linking them to
>other binding point being considered as a property of each of these
>binding points. It's the exploded view, as opposed to the factorized
>view (in the hyperlink model). This view is consistent with the grove
>paradigm
>and can be described using property sets.

Under this perspective, what are the individual objects that are the binding
points?  Are these objects the topic occurrences - the actual stuff that
is addressed?  Should these binding points be thought of as, again, nodes 
of some sort?

And what would be an example of the connector between these binding points?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Jim


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