Re: [topicmaps-comment] Good PSIs never die

[Kal Ahmed <kal@techquila.com>]

Bernard,

>If it is what you have in mind, yes, the TC recommendation *as is* slams 
>the door to such
>an eventuality, by saying that subject indicator has to be human-readable. 
>And I must
>admit that the above eventuality we have not thought about so far.
>
>So the question is now. Do we extend the recommendation to use cases where
>human-accessibility and human-readability of subject indicators would be 
>irrelevant, and
>subject indicators should be machine-readable? I'm sure someone outthere 
>will imagine such
>use-cases. If yes, we have either to open the recommendation to such 
>eventuality, or
>declare clearly it is out of its scope.

For PSIs which are generated from some source of information about subjects 
such as a database, is it reasonable to also require that a 
human-accessible version of the data be available ? I am thinking of 
examples such as a catalog or a set of personnel records - perhaps the 
topic map system wants to uniquely identify these subjects (e.g. PSIs based 
on an ISBN ?)

Cheers,

Kal