[topicmapmail] Regarding Facets

[Kal Ahmed]

I've already replied privately to Nikita on this one, but seeing as
there was a request to keep this thread public...

On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 05:40, Nikita Ogievetsky wrote:
> Kal Ahmed wrote:
> > I think this is the stumbling block. In XTM, an occurrence is defined
> > as:
> > "any information that is specified as being relevant to a given
> > subject." [http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/#desc-occurrence]
> 
> May be we should take this off-line...
> Yes, according to the above definition, most people (me included) are using
> occurrences to describe properties.
Me too! And I think that we are right in doing so.

> The problem with this is the difference between the name of <occurrence>
> element and its semantics.
> I.e. unless we rename <occurrence> into <relatedPieceOfInformation> ...
> the name of the syntactical element does not correspond to its meaning...
> (unless I need to brush-up my English of course :-))
> And that's what I was really trying to say here.
> 

I understand your position, the word 'occurrence' is potentially
confusing. Of course as one of the founder members of TopicMaps.Org, you
will know that this name has "historical" significance in that it ties
directly to the name of the matching concept in ISO 13250.

I would suggest that the problem lies not in the syntax, but in the
specification and in the (lack of) tutorials that go with the syntax
specification. I would also suggest that conversations like this are an
important part of the education process that will hopefully result in
fewer people being confused when they see <occurrence> in XTM syntax. So
I would argue for more energy going toward explaining the syntax we have
rather than changing it.

Cheers,

Kal