[topicmapmail] Contextualized Topic Maps.

[schulz@ivs.tu-berlin.de]

Tom P wrote:
> Yes, it is always a question what a "context" is and how one should be
> represented.  But no matter what, a context must, it seems to me, have
> to do with relationships between a topic and ....what?  Whatever it is
> could presumably be represented by one or more topics or associations,
> and the original topic would be related to the context via associations,
> I would think.

In my opinion, a "context" ist more than just a scope, actually is
knowledge, and may be represented by the same methods. In a tiny paper
(unfortunately german only) I proposed context to be represented as n-ary
associations, which somewhat can be compared to Lenats work on
multi-dimensional representation of context.
Why so? Because a (concrete) context relates a bunch of topics to define
it. With TopicMaps you can define both, the meta-layer by typing and the
definition layer by building "context"-typed n-ary associations. With
reification you can use context-relations for scoping or associating with
context-related topics.
Ok, this may sound a bit complicated. But building a context as an
association gives a stronger semantic to it. Related topics play specific
roles in a context and by having explicit, context-typed associations, one
could think of comparing contexts by the bound topics.
On the other hand, it does not necessitate to introduce new techniques or
elements to represent context in TopicMaps.

Cheers
Stefan