Re: [topicmaps-comment] TMs & XTM [Was: skills to create topic maps]

[Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>]

> > This magical piece of software is necessary for XTM conformance
> > testing. It would normalize the output of XTM processors and make 
> > them line-by-line compareable.

I'm not sure if "comparability" needs to be defined as "line for line"
comparability. In particular, I don't see why the preservation of
insignificant white space is required for comparability. The prospect
of having to maintain all whitespace across multiple merges,
particularly in the case of the humongous topic maps that will result
if topic maps are the success that we all hope they are, seems like a
lot of overhead for no gain. The sooner the topic map community decides
that making the processing of topic map documents dependent on white
space is bad practice, the better. 


>   3. graph normalized
>      This would be a topic map that throws XTM interoperability

What? IMHO, if two topic map documents produce the same graph, they're
the same topic map, ie interoperable. That is the whole purpose of
*having* the graph. What that is meaningful is thrown to the wind?

S.

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