[topicmapmail] graphic language for describing TopicMaps

[Patrick Durusau]

Murray,

Murray Altheim wrote:
> Thomas B. Passin wrote:

<snip>
>>
>> My take on this is that a TM association should not be compared to a 
>> single RDF triple.  Instead, a TM association is almost exactly like 
>> an RDF bnode that has a number of triples hanging off it.  Well, it 
>> does not _have_ to be a bnode (anonymous node), it could have an 
>> identifier, but typically it wouldn't have one, just like most 
>> associations don't seem to have universal identifiers.
> 
> 
> Seems pretty reasonable to me.
> 
>> The only real difference is that in RDF, the bnode is a Resource, just 
>> like all the other nodes.  However, if we regard an association as a 
>> specialized variety of topic, the two cases are nearly isomorphic.  
>> And why not consider an association to be a specialized variant kind 
>> of topic?  Then you wouldn't have to create a topic to reify an 
>> association, it would be its own topic already.
> 
> 
> Actually, that road has been travelled. I think Steve Pepper
> wrote a paper on everything being a Topic a few years ago. But
> at this point, the TM paradigm wouldn't necessarily benefit
> from this simplification, I'm certain the community wouldn't,
> and my take on things is that it's far better to concentrate
> on the existing semantics -- I mean, we have an ISO standard
> behind us -- it's not like we should push for a change to that.
> 

The first reference I could quickly find with "everything being a topic" 
was:

> 2) Conformance of work done in the XTM specification group must be monitored
> not to object in any sense to the fundamental concept of topic maps as given
> by the ISO 13250 standard. By fundamental I mean:
> - the core "philosophical" concepts like e.g. the relation between topics
> and subjects, the idea of everything being a topic, the orthogonality of the
> topic and occurrence layers and so on.

From: # "Dr. Heiko Beier" <heiko.beier@moresophy.de>

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/topicmaps-comment/200104/msg00054.html

Curious as to why you don't think there is a benefit in this 
"simplification"? (Which I think is already present in ISO 13250, but 
obscured by later practice in particular syntaxes and proposed 
processing models.)

I fail to see the advantage to the extra steps.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick



-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!