[topicmapmail] Merging associations

[Lars Heuer]

Hi Murray,
hi Joril,

I still suspect that TopicMap.mergeIn(Association) (and
TopicMap.mergeIn(Topic)) is something I like to have in TMAPI. But I
like to understand the semantics of the copy operation.

Think of these topic maps (using [AsTMa2]):

Topic map A:

      john isa person
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon  # Subject identifier
                                                # of john

      member-of isa contained-in

      member-of(group: the-beatles, member: john)

Topic map B:

      john
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon  # Subject identifier
                                                # of john


Now I like to copy the "member-of" association from topic map A to
topic map B.

Questions:
- Is the topic "contained-in" and that "member-of" is and instance of
  "contained-in" also copied to B?
- Is the information that "john isa person" added to B?
- Must the topics "group", "the-beatles", "member", "member-of" exist
  in the topic map B to be successfully copied?

[AsTMa2]<http://astma.it.bond.edu.au/astma=-spec-2.0r1.0.dbk>
  
Best regards,
Lars
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