[topicmapmail] Classification of occurrences using keywords

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Thomas B. Passin
| 
| This area can be pretty sticky.  For one thing, once there get to be
| too many keywords, it becomes really hard for a person to work with
| them and they need to be organized in some way.  Second, one's
| notion of the right keyword to use changes over time.  Third, surely
| it ought to be possible to apply some classification to the keywords
| themselves.

Yeah. Or to put it another way: consider keywords to be topics, and
proceed as you usually would with a topic map...
 
| Perhaps it comes down to your notion of what a keyword really
| represents.  A purist might say that a keyword represents a
| class-subclass relationship, so why not just use them and be done
| with it? 

How did you arrive at that? What is a keyword to you and how does that
correspond with class-subclass?

| I have tried keywords with browser bookmarks, and as my collection
| grew they became unmanageable.  This was in my pre-topic-maps era.
| I have tried using class-subclass associations with topic maps and
| was much happier, but I am still not convinced I have them worked
| out to best advantage.

Why class-subclass?
 
| The key question seems to be this - should bookmark folders and
| bookmarks actually be types of the categories they deal with, or
| should they just be folders and bookmarks that happen to be
| associated with those categories?
| 
| For example, should a folder that holds bookmarks about cats be a
| subclass of "Cat" (or better, "Cat-knowledge", since obviously it is
| not a cat), or should it be a subclass of "Folder", a subclass
| called perhaps "Cat-folder)?

I think you are seriously mixing things up. Either you should model
the bookmark structure in topic maps as it is, or you should create an
entirely different model.

That is, either

  [animals : folder = "Animals"]
  [cats : folder = "Cats"]
  contained-in(cats : containee, animals : container)

and so on, or be more specific and say

  [species = "Species"]
  [cat : species = "Cat"]

Either way, "Cats" is *not* a subclass of "Folder". You may have a
folder named "Cats", which would then be an instance of "Folder", but
subclass is just wrong.

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