[topicmapmail] Stupid newbie question: specification of association roles

[Murray Altheim]

Quoting "Andrew S. Townley" <ast at atownley.org>:

> 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. :)

Andrew,

I'm not sure what notation you're using but in all the notations
used for Topic Maps that I know of there's a way of expressing
the roles used in Associations. Perhaps you're thinking this is
more complicated than it is? Dunno, it's been there since the
beginning (indeed, the paradigm would be rather useless without
being able to specify association roles).

In XTM 1.0,

    http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/index.html#desc-role
    http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/index.html#elt-roleSpec

In LTM,

    http://www.ontopia.net/download/ltm.html#N250

e.g.,

    format-for(ltm : format, topic-maps : standard)

where 'format' and 'standard' are the role specs respective
to 'ltm' and 'topic-maps'.

I haven't used AsTMa in years but I seem to remember no lack
there either.

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray06 at altheim.com>                              ===  = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     = =  ===
SGML Grease Monkey, Banjo Player, Wantanabe Zen Monk               = =  = =

        In the evening
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