[topicmapmail] modelling synonyms

[Bernard Vatant]

I will add a little touch to the confusion created by Jean :))

Thesaurus best practice is to have descriptors (preferential terms) and synonyms (used for
terms)

Either you want a single topic for the concept, which is generally the pragmatic solution.
In that case you can attach the descriptor as baseName with a certain scope (descriptor),
and attach all the others with a different scope (synonym), as Lars Marius recommends.
Another way to do it is to use a specific kind of occurrence for synonyms.

If you have a very lexical viewpoint, you create a topic for each term, and create
synonymy associations with the roles "preferential term" and "used for". This is heavy,
but is closer to the way Thesaurus people see the question : a term is a subject, and
synonymy is relationship between close but not completely identical subjects. Making it
this way you can refine the type of synonymy by more specific roles if you like, and have
no problem of scope.

But various spellings of a same term, are definitely names of the same topic.

Bernard

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Bernard Vatant
Consultant - Mondeca
www.mondeca.com
Chair - OASIS TM PubSubj Technical Committee
www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/
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