[topicmapmail] Topic name display priority

[Murray Altheim]

I'm wondering how others have tackled a particular problem,
since I'm rewriting my topic name display methods. As much
as anything I'm looking for a little confirmation here...

I need to display a topic's name. Display names are variants
of basenames, which may be scoped, particularly by natural
language.

I suppose this comes down to what priority one puts on natural
language vs. display name, but I'm having a difficult time
figuring out where to put that priotity. For example, I might
locate a topic that has an English base name but no display
name, but have one on the French-localized base name. If the
user localization is English, do I choose the French display
name or the English non-display name, which might be less than
suitable for display?

My take on the ISO and XTM specs is that the proper thing
would be to choose the base name first, based on whatever
criteria, then check to see if there's a display name
available. This would avoid the conundrum above, since I'd
never gone down the French tree to locate its display name.

Thanks for any help,

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

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