RE: [xtm-wg] ANNOUNCE: Update of XTM Repository (new XTM prototype DTD)

["Kal Ahmed" <kal@ontopia.net>]

>
> [Murray:]
> > [Preface: I may be slightly wrong in some of these answers, but
> essentially
> > I'm hoping to describe what I believe we have in xtm07.dtd. The sample
> > instance xtm07.xml might help a bit, although I don't know if
> Steve, Michel
> > and Sam have looked that hard at the sample. Perhaps one of
> them can chime
> > in on my weaknesses...]
>
> I'm just going to quibble a little.
>
> [Kal Ahmed:]
> > > ...I am assuming that only
> > > baseNameString's are subject to the topic naming constraint
> and that this
> > > would be described more clearly in the accompanying prose text.
>
> Right.
>
> > > I think, however that it might be useful to define two new PSIs for
> > > 'displayable' and 'sortable' to use as <parameter>'s to partition the
> > > variantNames in some consistent manner.
>
> You read our minds, or we read yours.
>
> > > 3) Identity
> > > Where did it go ? Perhaps I'm missing something in my reading
> of the spec,
> > > but it seems that I have no way to declare the subject of a
> topic. This is a
> > > major concern
> >
> > The <instanceOf> child element in <topic> says what the subject of the
> > topic is:
> >
> >    <topic>
> >      <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#us-railroad"/></instanceOf>
> >      <baseName>
> >        <baseNameString>Union Pacific</baseNameString>
> >      </baseName>
> >      ...
> >    </topic>
> >
> >  could be translated to:
> >
> >    "this topic's subject is an instance of 'U.S. Railroad'."
>
> No.  <instanceof> establishes a class-instance relationship between
> the topic node corresponding to the containing <topic> element
> (playing the role of "instance"), and the topic node corresponding to
> the <topic> element that plays the "class" role in the same
> relationship.  That has nothing to do with the subject
> identity of the <topic>.
>
>
> Whatever happened to the -identity- attribute of <topic> in 13250?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
<snip> lots of good stuff cut out for brevity </snip>

> So here's what happened to 13250's -identity- attribute, according to
> me.
>
> * To specify the subject descriptor of a topic, make the subject
>   descriptor an occurrence of that topic.  However, instead of using
>   <resourceRef> to point at the subject descriptor, use <topicRef>
>   instead.
>

Firstly, as Nikita has pointed out topicRef is missing from the content
model of either resource or occurrences.

As you say, <scope> really has nothing to do with identity, therefore I
assume that topicRef should be added to the content model of occurrences. If
this is not the case, then what is the processing model for this ?

<topic>
	<baseName>techquila.com</baseName>
	<occurrences>
		<resource>
			<scope>
				<topicRef xlink:href="#some-topic"/>
			</scope>
			<topicRef xlink:href="http://www.techquila.com/" referent="isSubject"/>
		</resource>
	</occurrences>
</topic>

Assuming that <topicRef> is actually part of the content model of resource,
I still have a couple of further questions.

Is it correct that despite the name, topicRef can reference anything which
can be used as a subject descriptor (i.e. anything at all) and not just a
topic. Furthermore, given that the xlink:href is a URI, is it possible to
use a URN syntax for the reference.

In other words, can I do this:

<topic>
	<baseName>Kal Ahmed</baseName>
	<occurrences>
		<topicRef xlink:href="http://www.ontopia.net/people/kal_ahmed/"/>
		<topicRef xlink:href="urn:ontopia.net:20001108:people:kal_ahmed"/>
		<topicRef
xlink:href="http://www.ontopia.net/people/topicmap.xtm#kal_ahmed"/>
	</occurrences>
</topic>

Where the first two are simply URI syntax PSIs in the ISO13250 sense but the
third is a <topic> which describes the subject should be merged with this
<topic>. And can I also do this:

<topic>
	<baseName>techquila.com</baseName>
	<occurrences>
		<topicRef xlink:href="http://www.techquila.com/" referent="isSubject"/>
	</occurrences>
</topic>

Where the subject *is* the internet resource located at
http://www.techquila.com

Now, assuming that I have got this straight I have just one concern, which
stems from this question. Is a conformant XTM processing application
*required* to familiarise itself with all of the subject descriptors in a
given topic map and to perform the appropriate merging ? While I can see
that this processing model would be desirable, I would hope not that it
would not be required for conformance, especially if
http://www.ontopia.net/people/topicmap.xtm is several MB is size...

Cheers,

Kal


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