[topicmapmail] Reasons why variant is recursive, and is this really necessary?

[Nikita Ogievetsky]

Paul,

It is a syntactic sugar. In fact,

<baseName>
<variant>
 <parameters><topicRef xlink:href="#a"/></parameters>
 <variantName><resourceRef xlink:href="abc"/></variantName>
 <variant>
   <parameters><topicRef xlink:href="#b"/></parameters>
   <variantName><resourceRef xlink:href="xyz"/></variantName>
  </variant>
</variant>
<baseNameString>BLAH-BLAH</baseNameString>
</baseName>

is equivalent to:

<baseName>
<variant>
 <parameters><topicRef xlink:href="#a"/></parameters>
 <variantName><resourceRef xlink:href="abc"/></variantName>
</variant>
<variant>
  <parameters>
    <topicRef xlink:href="#a"/>
    <topicRef xlink:href="#b"/>
  </parameters>
  <variantName><resourceRef xlink:href="xyz"/></variantName>
</variant>
<baseNameString>BLAH-BLAH</baseNameString>
</baseName>

--Nikita

Nikita Ogievetsky, nogievet@cogx.com;
Cogitech Inc.        http://www.cogx.com
Topic Maps Tutorials and Consulting.
phone:  1 (917) 406 - 8734

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Goldstein" <pgoldstein@timeinc.net>
To: <topicmapmail@infoloom.com>
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 8:45 AM
Subject: [topicmapmail] Reasons why variant is recursive, and is this really
necessary?


> I'm curious about what people think about the recursive nature of the
> variant element, and I'm wondering if this is really necessary in Topic
> Maps. I'm not disputing that it has a purpose, only that it seems
> unlikely to be used much. Also, since its the only such recursive
> structure its seems like sort of a blemish on the topic map spec, and
> ads some complexity to developing APIs, etc for TMs.
>
> Can anyone give me some good examples of where having a variant inside a
> variant inside a variant, etc might be useful? How many people have used
> variant recursively like this in their TMs?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Paul G.
>
> --
> Paul Goldstein
> Senior Systems Developer
> Time Inc.
> 212-522-0565
> pgoldstein@timeinc.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> topicmapmail mailing list
> topicmapmail@infoloom.com
> http://www.infoloom.com/mailman/listinfo/topicmapmail
>
>
>