[topicmapmail] Any semantic order to repeatable "or" groups of constructs in XTM?

[G. Ken Holman]

I wanted to confirm my own understanding that there is no semantic to the=20
ordering of repeatable "or" groups in the XTM document model ... that these=
=20
are a mere authoring convenience.

There are a number of places in XTM where repeatable "or" groups allow the=
=20
authored instance to include constructs in an arbitrary order:

( topic | association | mergeMap )*
( topicRef | resourceRef | subjectIndicatorRef )*
( baseName | occurrence )*
( topicRef | subjectIndicatorRef )*

So, the question arises ... would an XTM user ever want the authored=20
ordering of the repeatable "or" groups preserved?  If anyone thinks so,=20
please speak up.

Also, I'm writing some SAX code to read and write XTM, and SAX doesn't give=
=20
me any comments.  I can imagine an XTM author might want comments=20
preserved, but is this na=EFve?

By "preserved" I mean "round-tripping" a topic map expression from XTM into=
=20
a topic map engine and back out to XTM again, where the XTM out is as close=
=20
as possible syntactically (group order, comments, etc.) to what went in=20
(the semantics of the underlying topic map expressed by the XTM would=20
assumedly be preserved).

Since the "best" way to look at a topic map is *always* through a topic map=
=20
engine and *not* through XTM syntax, is it such a crime to not preserve=20
group order, top-level construct order or authored comments found in an XTM=
=20
file?  I hope I can ignore these with impunity.

I would appreciate anyone expressing their opinion on my assumptions.

Thanks!

................. Ken

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