Re: [xtm-wg] Questions about Merging.

["Steven R. Newcomb" <srn@coolheads.com>]

[Steve Pepper:]
> Two topics with a <subjectIdentity>:<topicRef> in common have the
> same subject as the referenced topic and hence the same subject as
> each other. All three would get merged.

Side-issue: I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying here, but
I'm uncertain about the notation.  Maybe I missed something.  What is
the significance of the colon in <subjectIdentity>:<topicRef>?  Does
it mean "<topicRef> child of <subjectIdentity>"?

> On the other hand, in order to achieve round-tripping, an
> application could choose to retain knowledge of the original form of
> serialization and provide the option of using this when
> reserializing.

I believe the application *must* retain at least the address of any
<topic> element (or other element that demands the existence of a
topic), because it is an identity point for that topic.  This address
would have to be retained at least until all the <topicMap>s that are
going to be read have indeed been read, just in case any of them
contain any <subjectIndicatorRef>s or <topicRef>s to the <topic>.

So, if you're keeping the address around anyway, you can always get
back to the original representation.  What I'm having trouble
imagining is, why would you want to?  What purpose is served by
"round-tripping" that preserves nonsignificant syntactic phenomena?
During (and possibly after) processing, the address is very
significant, but, after processing, the element that's at that address
isn't interesting at all, as far as I can see.  All the interesting
aspects of it are already fully known and accounted for.

-Steve

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Steven R. Newcomb, Consultant
srn@coolheads.com

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