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

[Lars Marius Garshol]

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

Ken, the final answer on these questions are found in the SAM and the
new XTM syntax specification. See
  <URL: http://www.isotopicmaps.org/sam/sam-xtm/ >

Of course, this will only tell you what the standard requires. As Kal
points out various applications have requirements that require you to
preserve such information, but in those cases it is the user
requirements that you must follow. (So long as you preserve the
minimum required by the specifications you are in compliance.)

In the OKS we've simply decided that we are not preserving lexical
information such as order of topics/associations and so on, and that's
that. The thinking behind this has been that topic maps should be
maintained via a user interface rather than in an XML document.

| Since the "best" way to look at a topic map is *always* through a
| topic map engine and *not* through XTM syntax, is it such a crime to
| not preserve group order, top-level construct order or authored
| comments found in an XTM file?

No. The specfications do *not* require you to do this.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >