[topicmapmail] occurrence abuse ? Was: [geolang-comment] First proposals for ISO 639 and 3166 available

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 17:34:14 +0200

Jan

You think people are lazy, and that's why they will use occurrence for a code, a phone
number,
an address, a short description or a long name (fuzzy boarder here, trying to fix it will
lead to nowhere except religious wars),
an application note ...
 whatever bit of information that they do not consider important enough to be made the
subject of a distinct topic,
although they know that in theory it could (should) be.

I must confess I've done it many times, and will do again.
Even though, as Murray and you, I long have considered to consider it as an abuse,
a drift from the original thinking of topic maps "fathers". But now I'm not sure ...

An abuse maybe, but a very pragmatic and efficient one. Maybe lazy people are right after
all.

ISO 13250 says:

"topic occurrence: Information that is specified as relevant to a given subject".

and further on

"This International Standard imposes no constraints on the nature of information objects
that can be specified as occurrences of topics, nor on the addressing notations used to
reference
such occurrences."

And in XTM 1.0 prose

"topic occurrence: A resource containing information that is specified as relevant to a
given subject"

Please explain in what aspect e-mail address, birth date or phone number do not fit that
definition?
 ... or even name or code ... as long as the occurrence type is clearly specified, where
is the problem?

Bernard

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

----- Message d'origine -----
De : "Jan Algermissen" <algermissen@acm.org>
À : <topicmapmail@infoloom.com>
Envoyé : mardi 20 août 2002 14:28
Objet : [topicmapmail] occurrence abuse ? Was: [geolang-comment] First proposals for ISO
639 and 3166 available

> The message below is taken from the OASIS geolang-comment list. It addresses an
> issue that I think of as 'abuse of occurrences'. I think this is of general interest
> so I repost it here.
>
>
> <quote>
>
> Murray Altheim wrote:
> >
> > John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > > Lars Marius Garshol scripsit:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Basically whether the strings in question are human-oriented names or
> > >>labels for the subjects[1]. In my opinion these strings are clearly
> > >>occurrences rather than names. The country at the south tip of Africa
> > >>has names like 'South Africa' and 'Afrique du Sud', but not like 'ZA',
> > >>'ZAF', or '710'.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Fair enough, but I still feel uncomfortable with saying that the string
> > > "710" is an *occurrence* of the country denoted by "South Africa",
> > > in the same sense that http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
> > > is an occurrence of the (U.S.) Declaration of Independence.
> > > I may be misled by the use of the term "occurrence" here, though.
> > >
> > > OTOH, "710" does name (within a suitably restricted scope) that country,
> > > in the sense of being a unique label for it.  The most central sense of "name",
> > > namely personal name, is not a basename in an XTM sense: there are other
> > > John Cowans within any non-arbitrary scope (there is another within
> > > Reuters, e.g., and we sometimes get each other's mail).
> >
> > This is precisely why in the design of the XTM 1.0 country and
> > language topic maps I used names rather than occurrences (which
> > I had considered). "710" *is* a name for a country within the
> > scope of the UN code base. It's not an occurrence of that country.
> > Now, as we all know, the language used to describe the topics and
> > scopes heavily influences how this all fleshes out; errors are
> > easy to make.
> >
> > I also have difficulty with using occurrences for another reason.
> > Occurrences are (to my mind) the territory being mapped by a topic
> > map, not the map. These topic maps are themselves being used as
> > maps, such that "occurrences" would be what "users" populate the
> > maps with. [I quote those words because I think the potential uses
> > of these topic maps so wide as to make such characterizations a
> > bit misleading.] I hope you get my drift though: occurrences are
> > quite different than names in the topic map paradigm. They exist
> > across the gulf from each other.
> >
> > Murray
>
>
> </quote>
>
> I think that it is an error to use occurrences for anything else than
> for the relationship between a subject and a resource whose content is
> dealing with the subject in some way. In particular I think it is an abuse
> of the notion of 'occurrence' when <resourceData> elements are used to
> assign properties to topics.
>
> Example:
>
> <topic id="t1">
>   <baseName>
>     <baseNameString>Donald Duck</baseNameString>
>   </baseName>
>   <occurrence>
>     <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#email" /></instanceOf>
>     <resourceData>dduck@hotmail.com</resourceData>
>   </occurrence>
>   <occurrence>
>     <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#birthdate" /></instanceOf>
>     <resourceData>01.01.1930</resourceData>
>   </occurrence>
> </topic>
>
> I think that neither the email address nor the birthdate is an
> occurrence of the topic, I think that they are properties and that they
> should be assigned to the topic via the use of associations (e.g. with
> a bornBeing-birthdate association). [1]
> Also, making the date a resource 'hides' the fact that it is a subject
> in it's own right and it makes it much harder, for example, to lookup
> all beings that are born on that particular date.
>
> Since the <resourceData> element makes it so dangerously easy to take anything
> that comes in form of a string (dates, addresses, measurements (e.g. height
> of a person)), wrap it inside <resourceData> and make it an occurrence of
> a topic I am curious
>
>
> * if this was actually the intention of the XTM authoring group
>
>
> * what others think about this issue and in particular how others
>   solve the assignment of properties to topics
>
>
> Jan
>
>
> [1] Since we can consider the email address to be an unambigous identifier
>     of the topic, it might be a solution to make it a base name.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jan Algermissen
> Consultant & Programmer
>
> Tel:   ++49 (0)40 89 700 511
>        ++49 (0)177 283 1440
> Fax:   ++49 (0)40 89 700 841
> Email: algermissen@acm.org
> Web:   http://www.topicmapping.com
> _______________________________________________
> topicmapmail mailing list
> topicmapmail@infoloom.com
> http://www.infoloom.com/mailman/listinfo/topicmapmail
>