RE: [xtm-wg] Merging proposals uploaded

[Peter Jones <peterj@wrox.com>]

Kal,

Liked most of the proposal. One bit I'm not really sure about...

In the processing cross-references section, isn't

<!ELEMENT xtmdoc (redirect, topicmap)+>
        <!ELEMENT redirect EMPTY>
        <!ATTLIST redirect
               tmid     IDREF #REQUIRED
               tmbase   CDATA #REQUIRED
               idprefix CDATA #REQUIRED>
NOTE: the redirect is implicitly bundled with the topicmap that it applies
to. 

inconsistent with the need to 
"1.      Ensure that all object identifiers are unique across all topic maps
in the package."

I.e. if there is already an (unintentional) id attribute name clash across
the tmaps then the packaging prefix won't fix that(?).

"An alternative content model would be (redirect+, topicmap+) ..."
An improvement on the above perhaps in that the problem of clashed ids goes
away in principle providing the processing of 'redirect' is enforced. 

Isn't this just about declaring namespace info for IDs in each map (again.
sigh)? 
Rather than hard wire it into syntax (and I am presuming that you are doing
this because you want to XML parse the entire xtmdoc at once) couldn't we do
the following:

(rapid extemporising follows...might not be sound.)

XML parse each individual topic map.
Package them into one xtmdoc, and when we do so write an extra little topic
map in that provides the info in <redirect ...> in topics for each map?

This might allow us to kill the unintentional id name clash by doing look
ups on the context of each map before we package them into one xtmdoc.

(...maybe.)

Peter



-----Original Message-----
From: Kal Ahmed [mailto:kal@ontopia.net]
Sent: 19 October 2000 11:32
To: xtm-wg@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [xtm-wg] Merging proposals uploaded


For those who can't get into egroups, the proposal is attached.

Cheers,

Kal

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kal Ahmed [mailto:kal@ontopia.net]
> Sent: 19 October 2000 11:29
> To: xtm-wg@egroups.com
> Subject: [xtm-wg] Merging proposals uploaded
>
>
> The file
> http://www.egroups.com/files/xtm-wg/Interchange/merge-proposal%2Ehtml
> contains three separate proposals (or at least they are separate
> in my mind
> ;-).
>
> 1) A proposal for the syntax of mergemaps. In fact, this is the proposal
> that was voted on and passed, so this is really a closed issue.
>
> 2) A proposal for the processing model of merging - determining what topic
> maps to merge and what requirements a conformant application must
> adhere to.
>
> 3) A proposal for handling xtmdoc. In my mind, if the AF purpose of xtmdoc
> is not to be documented, then the other purpose that it has (i.e.
> packaging
> multiple topicmaps) must be documented, including the expected processing
> model. I think that there is also a need for ensuring that the
> packaging and
> unpackaging can actually be done simply. If the other purpose of xtmdoc is
> to be documented (and I for one am not sure that we have the time to do
> this), then this proposal could be safely dropped. BTW, I feel that
> packaging tms is a really weak argument considering that the merging and
> scoping mechanisms can be trivially combined to do tm packaging, so this
> proposal is somewhat of a compromise proposal.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kal
>
>
>
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