Re: [topicmaps-comment] Mapping Topics to Cyc: How To Handle Scope?

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| XTM doesn't say that. It says very clearly that "This specification
| places no constraints on how applications interpret scope."  If you
| look at section 2.2.1.6 you'll also see that there is nothing at all
| about this issue there.

* Murray Altheim
| 
| My recollection of discussions during the development of XTM (which
| was based on my conversations including the originators of the ISO
| standard) was that it was the *union* of the scopes, and in practice
| I have difficulty understanding it any other way.

As Steve Newcomb has pointed out, the terms union/intersection are not
very good for discussing this issue. Marc de Graauw has started asking
whether a scope is valid when *all* its themes or when *any* of them
apply. I think that's the best way to put this.

In any case, there are two things to consider here:

 a) what the standard says, and

 b) what the standard should say.

The current XTM specification currently says *neither* "any" nor
"all", while ISO 13250:2000 says "any", and the current SAM draft says
"all".

What the standard *should* say is a SAM issue. Input on that is very
much welcome. (Which reminds me: can I consider what you write below
to be your official opinion on this, and record it in the issues topic
map?)
 
| If I have, for example, a topic "Jimmy Carter" with a base name
| "President" (since he could be called that after he was elected)
| whose scope is
| 
|       scope of titles
|       scope of English
|       scope of time "after 1977"
| 
| we couldn't very well allow merging if only *one* of the scopes
| match, otherwise merging might occur simply on "English" (and
| have all presidents' topics merged into one. Thomas confuses me
| in saying 'it really has to be a "OR"' as I would consider that
| a logical "AND".

I think Thomas means what he says, and that he disagrees with you.
(He agrees with ISO 13250:2000, BTW.)

BTW, here's a reference table to the terminology:

  +---------------------+--------------+-------+
  | Deprecated          | Intersection | Union |
  +---------------------+--------------+-------+
  | Sub-optimal         | Or           | And   |
  +---------------------+--------------+-------+
  | Currently preferred | Any          | All   |
  +---------------------+--------------+-------+

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >