[topicmapmail] multiple Source Locators

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Jan Algermissen
| 
| I think, that it is a question of DECIDING what the MEANING of a
| subject locator is.

I agree, and most of the discussion in the committee F2F meetings
revolved around this.

| If This meaning allows multiple subject locators to address the same
| 'thing', then, yes, we should have a set of them instead of a single
| one.

This is my view.
 
| Beware that this also depends on the technology that you deploy
| topic maps on.  For example, when used with the Web/URIs, an address
| can NEVER address a piece of data, just abstractions of it, because
| URIs address resources (abstractions), not representations (data).
| That is an architectural property of the Web and it IMHO
| significantly affects the semantics of 'subject locator'.

It does, but it still doesn't make "subject locator" the same as
"subject identifier". (For those who don't know: the latter is the URI
of a subject indicator.)
 
| (To add to the confusion: I personally have dropped the use of
| subject locators alltogether in projects that use Topic Maps and
| HTTP and instead only use subject indicators. This creatly improves
| interoperability with the technology (browsers) and also with RDF.)

I suppose it does improve interoperability with RDF, but whether
that's an argument is very much disputable. I guess you could argue
that dropping the use of scope and n-ary associations would achieve
the same thing, which would of course be true, but now you'd have
given up many of the benefits of topic maps and might as well just use
RDF...

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