Re: [xtm-wg] Syntax is a bitch :-(

["W. Eliot Kimber" <eliot@isogen.com>]

Michel Biezunski wrote:
> 
> [Eliot Kimber:]
> 
>  For example, with XPath, it's almsot as easy to
> > address by unique topic name as it is to address by ID value.
> 
> Except that this solution will not work if there is the slightest change
> in your topic map document. Therefore this is only  advisable if the topic
> map
> is never going to change.
> 
> (The ID strategy does not completely protect from the same problem, but it's
> slightly sounder.)

The are exactly equal.

Michel's comment brings up the whole nasty issue of version management
in a hyperlinked environment, which is a problem that requires a good
bit of explanation to completely understand and that is not really
appropriate to discuss in this forum. Suffice it to say that if you
solve the problem of managing links in a versioned environment
generally, then there is no functional difference between IDs and any
other form of address you care to use. If you have not solved this
problem, then IDs give you a barely managable solution when very extreme
constraints are imposed on authors and doesn't solve any problems with
taking two documents and constructing a new third document from them
(which is itself just a special case of the general "create new version
from existing version" use case).

In non-trivial use cases IDs provide no appreciable value for managing
addresses because of the additional work you already have to go to to
maintain knowedge of referents over time. They may offer value for
debugging but that's a separate issue.

Cheers,

E.

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