[topicmapmail] Subject Identifiers metadata

[Kal Ahmed]

On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 11:41, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> * Kal Ahmed
> | 
> | The note says that you cannot reify a topic. You can, however reify
> | any characteristic of the topic.
> 
> I guess I should step in here to clear this up, despite this post
> being quite old by now. Topics and topic characteristics are actually
> in the same boat as regards reification in TMDM, even though this may
> not be immediately obvious.
> 
<clarification removed (but read ;-)>

> Any thoughts on whether the language in the TMDM should be modified to
> make this clearer?

I'm not sure about the TMDM, but I think that the only way to be clearer
is to avoid using the word "topic" by itself but instead talk about "an
XTM topic element", "topic information item" and "subject".

IMO, it makes sense to reify an XTM topic element (or an LTM/AsTMa!
construct for topic) - because there is a real resource to point to. It
also makes sense to talk about reifying a subject, because thats what
topics do. The question is (I think) does it make sense to talk about
reifying a topic information item - perhaps that is what the TMDM should
concern itself with. If it does make sense to do that (and there were
some use cases relating to expressing metadata), then there should be
clear guidance as to how that is achieved. If it doesn't make sense or
if it is something that is implementation specific, then we (as a
community) should attempt to develop some best practice regarding this.

Cheers,

Kal

-- 
Kal Ahmed <kal@techquila.com>
techquila