RE: [topicmaps-comment] invitation to post tech material resituatedness etc

[David Dodds <drdodds42@hotmail.com>]

Hi Paul

I invite you to (possibly one more time) post discussion of the following 
topics in topicmaps-comment:

1) situatedness, what you perceive it to be, in realm expressed by graph 
structures (ie "graphs")

2) situatedness, what you perceive it to be, in realm expressed by 
specifically topic maps (ie XTM), as they are now or as they might be in the 
future (with your explanation as to what needs to be added to the current 
version of XTM to allow them to support your notions of situatedness).

3) your notions of scope, and how the current scope mechanism in XTM (XML 
Tpoc Maps) might be expanded or otherwise changed, such that XTM might 
support your notion of scope.

4) your notions on formative ontology. how is current XTM lacking in this 
area? what changes and or additions do you feel would be necessary to 
support your notions of formative ontologies?

constructive and clear discussion of these things is welcomed by some member 
of the XTM using community, myself included.

I further suggest that if you can provide discussion of how stratification 
might be enabled in topic maps that that also would be a useful discussion 
for you to provide here.

The XTM community is largely busy trying to perform revenue earning 
activities with software at the same time that they are working on 
developing and furthering the topic map scene. They respond better to 
constructive technical discussion than to fault finding and will be 
persuaded to develop software when there is some hope of tying the 
development into remuneration in some way. (there has been great discussion 
of the need for $ elsewhere).

If there is any reluctance on the part of the topic map community to your 
ideas Paul I think it might be because they have not seen technical 
discussion of your ideas which they were able to clearly understand. Perahps 
if the ideas were stated in language more in concert with terms that the TM 
community is familar with that the concepts would be then conveyed instead 
of confusion due to nonfamiliarity with your terminilogical usage. Explain 
the concepts in simple language. I think you would get an audience.

David Dodds


>From: psp <beadmaster@ontologystream.com>
>To: "Bandholtz, Thomas" <thomas.bandholtz@koeln.sema.slb.com>, 
>topicmaps-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>Subject: RE: [topicmaps-comment] referring to a topic from outside a TM
>Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 12:25:12 -0500
>
>RE: [topicmaps-comment] referring to a topic from outside a TMI can not 
>seem
>to figure out how to unsubscribe.. as there is not line in the messages 
>sent
>from this forum to help in this regard.
>
>This is generally the case with forums, and the managers of this forum
>should make the correction.  You should be placing a line at the end that
>reminds folks how to unsubscribe rather than holding us captive to 
>technical
>discussions that go nowhere and are aimed at nothing that I can make any
>sense of.
>
>I have listened to the topic maps discussion for over a year now, and there
>seems very little movement on any of the outstanding issues with respect to
>the notion of scope and situatedness.
>
>My own work and occasional request for discussion on formative ontology is
>never even responded to with any acknowledgement.
>
>So I wish to not receive the posts from Oasis... these are not comments
>about the nature and reality of topic maps (no one here is in a position to
>discuss the clear shortcomings) it is a technical discussion that serves to
>disguise the fact that the relationship between addressable subjects and
>non-addressable subjects is no longer of any technical importance to
>anyone - including the original group that so clearly spelled out the
>issues.
>
>
>
>
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: Bandholtz, Thomas [mailto:thomas.bandholtz@koeln.sema.slb.com]
>   Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 12:10 PM
>   To: 'topicmaps-comment@lists.oasis-open.org'
>   Subject: RE: [topicmaps-comment] referring to a topic from outside a TM
>
>
>
>
>   > {Thomas Passin]
>   > This would be easy to arrange from a programming point of view.  But
>   > consider that you use this interface to retrieve a single topic:
>   >
>   > <topic id='tt-flood-portsmouth-1936'>
>   >     <baseName><baseNameString> The Great Portsmouth
>   > Flood</baseNameString></basename>
>   >     <instanceOf><topicRef
>   >
>   > link:href='http://theSourceOfTheMap.com/#tt-flood-portsmouth-1926'/>
>   >     </instanceOf>
>   > </topic>
>   >
>   > It turns out that you do not have the class topic with
>   > id='tt-flood-portsmouth-1936'.  As a person, you can read the
>   > baseNameString
>   > of the imported topic and perhaps know what it represents
>   > (depending on the
>   > actual name).   But your processor cannot.  It may not even
>   > be valid to
>   > insert this topic into your map, since it references an
>   > unknown topic.
>
>   If you maintain your Topic Map based on xlink:href using URIs that point
>to GET requests, you will do this consequently.
>
>   In this case any *internal* class definition would also be referenced by 
>a
>GET request.
>
>   The class topic tt-flood-portsmouth-1936 would not reside in the <topic>
>range that is returned by the first request, but it can be accessed in the
>same way, by reeding what
>http://theSourceOfTheMap.com/?id=tt-flood-portsmouth-1926 returns.
>
>   If http://theSourceOfTheMap.com/#tt-flood-portsmouth-1926 is defined
>somewhere outside in an XML-document (using anchors), then there is no
>difference between the two methods.
>
>   Using GET requests means: whenever you find any xlink:href, just read to
>what this URI points and you will get exactly the related object, possibly
>containing xlink:hrefs itself which you can read in the same way, and so 
>on,
>as long as you find some more.
>
>   > Even if you could use the topic as is, its associations and
>   > occurrences are
>   > probably what you really want, and they each have their own types,
>   > superclasses, etc.  You really want a whole subgraph, but how
>   > do you know
>   > what subgraph you want, and how do you ask for that subgraph?
>
>   You can easily implement a Service that returns subgraphs, i.e. all the
>associations of one topic + all the topics referred to by these 
>associations
>+ all class definitions, etc ..
>
>   But this is not what a topicRef wants. A topicRef points to exactly 1
>topic. If you want to follow the links specified in the topic itself, just
>do it, endlessly. They don't have to be in one file alltogether.
>
>   > The interface to get associations by topic id definitely will
>   > help, but it's
>   > not really going to be enough, I think.
>
>   > That's why I see
>   > this subject as
>   > complicated and important.
>
>   Right! I am repeating myself:
>   1) There must be a way that Topic Maps can be fully maintained in
>databases without any file dumps.
>   2) A HTTP GET request is a valid value for xtm:topicRef, just as an
>anchored URL.
>
>   Thomas Bandholtz
>




David Dodds


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