Re: A-, T- and S-nodes WAS [xtm-wg] A challenge on "the graph"

[Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>]

> * Lars Marius Garshol
> |
> | I have to say that I'm not at all happy with this model. Much of
> the
> | intent I agree with, but the form it has taken I find repugnant in
> | the extreme.
> 
> * Sam Hunting
> | 
> | Don't be shy Lars! Say what you feel? :-)
> 
> I did already! :-)
>  
> | Can you expand on both parts of your statement? (1) What do you
> | perciee that the intent is,
> 
> What I meant was that much of the ideas expressed about what an
> abstract topic map looks like I agree with.
> 
> | and (2) what's repugnant about the form?
> 
> That everything is reduced to three kinds of nodes, and that one of
> those kinds of nodes (S-nodes) seems *beep*. Turning resources into
> topics is just *beep* *beep* *beep*. There is more, but I have no
> time right now to really explain this properly.

Well, Lars, since this is the key technical point of the discussion, I
really think that you should try and find the time!

Seriously, any paradigm shift (and make no mistake, that is what topic
maps are) involves people saying "it's beep, beep, beep". It's the
nature of the beast. 
 
[sam]
> | (The notion of nodes connected by typed arcs seems simple and
> | elegant to me, but then what do I know?)
> 
> Well, it _is_ elegant in its quirky mathematical way; it's just so
> far
> removed from what an implementation would look like that as a basis
> for describing requirements for implementations it doesn't work very
> well.

Well, I'm hearing two things then. One is that the PM shouldn't look
like an implememtation; the other is that it is too far "removed" from
an implementation. What am I missing here?

[sam]
> It also requires considerable mental effort to piece together
> what is going on there.

Et alors? (translation "So?") Actually, that's a cheap shot, sorry. But
this is a pedagogical issue, not a technical one. 

[lars]
> If you think there are only three kinds of things in topic maps, then
> why doesn't the syntax reflect that? If the syntax doesn't reflect
> that, why should the abstract model? If you've first gone to the
> trouble of separating base names from occurrences, why squash the two
> concepts back together in the abstract model? 

The markup is optimized for human consumption -- and the DTD is getting
a lot of traction (market penetration) so presumably that portion of
the effort has been successful.

Since the DTD represents a topic map in one dimension, and the PM has
to represent the topic map in many, there should be no surprise that
the two representations are not isomorphic.

[lars]
> Well, you ended up getting a rant on this anyway. I'm just sending
> this off now, as I have no time to organize it properly.

OK -- I'm sure we'll have the chance to talk again ;-)

S.

=====
<!-- "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
     - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations -->

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