[topicmapmail] Stupid newbie question: specification of association roles

[Andrew S. Townley]

Hi,

I'm just trying to get my head around how you define topic maps based on
the various articles, tutorials and specifications.  Maybe the
constraints listed in some of the papers here
(http://www.topicmap.com/topicmap/resources.html#constraints) cover
this, but I haven't read them all yet.  Feel free to point me to one and
say RTFM.

What I'm wondering is if there is, or if not, why there isn't a way to
specify the required roles of an association.  If you define the
association as a topic, how can it make sense to have instances of that
association with different roles?  It looks like this is more-or-less
the intention of the association skeleton in AsTMa, beyond just allowing
notation simplification, but I don't get the feeling that this is part
of the topic map specifications.

Maybe these things are obvious, so, as I said, pointers are welcome. 
I'm anxious to get all this figured out so I can start playing. :)

Cheers,

ast
-- 
Andrew S. Townley <ast at atownley.org>
http://atownley.org