Re: [topicmaps-comment] TAO vs. ERA

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

[Bernard Vatant]

>...
> For the reason above, the same way I consider "author" and "writer"
separate.
> What happens if someone wants to "translate" your topic map in a language
where
> really there are two different words for composer-role and
> composer-social-class? And moreover it's always cleaner to manage topic
types
> and role types separately. Believe me, I've been through it many times.
Having a
> topic used as class and as role as the same time may bring messy
situations. At
> some moment inconsistencies will appear, and it will be too late. Merging
topics
> is quite easy, splitting a polysemic topic is a headache.
>

I agree with this.  In fact, in my own small application, when I create a
new role topic, it gets listed in a different select list just for roles -
it doesn't get displayed in a general select list of topics.  The same for
scoping topics.

Of course, people can always bend rules and get away with it, so we can mix
up role-composers with person-composers or whatever, but I agree with
Bernard that it's best to keep them separate when you get a chance to do so.

This discussion highlights what I said a bit earlier about modeling being
hard!  I would say a good practice would to be stricter in creating maps
than you are in interpreting them (analogous to writing strictly correct
html but having the browser be tolerant about errors).

Cheers,

Tom P