Re: Trust, Context, Justification and Quintuples

Patrick:
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=geolang

> Look in the documents section for language.xtm and country.xtm.

Just to unpack an entry:

  <topic id="NU">
    <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#country"/></instanceOf>
    <subjectIdentity>
      <subjectIndicatorRef 
xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#NU"/>
      <subjectIndicatorRef 
xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#N-570"/>
      <subjectIndicatorRef 
xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#A3-NIU"/>
    </subjectIdentity>
    <baseName><scope><subjectIndicatorRef 
xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/language.xtm#en"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>NIUE</baseNameString></baseName>
    <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha2"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>NU</baseNameString></baseName>
    <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha3"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>NIU</baseNameString></baseName>
  </topic>


This seems to suggest the use of any of three URIs 
http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#NU
http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#N-570
http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#A3-NIU

For the country whose name is written in English as
NIUE

and who has two and three letter abbreviations of NU and NIU.

If I actually retrieve http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm I get 
different data :(


  <topic id="NU">
    <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#country-name"/></instanceOf>
    <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha2"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>NU</baseNameString></baseName>
    <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha3"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>NIU</baseNameString></baseName>
    <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="language.xtm#en"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>Niue</baseNameString></baseName>
    <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="language.xtm#en"/>
      <topicRef xlink:href="#uppercase"/></scope>
      <baseNameString>NIUE</baseNameString></baseName>
  </topic>

Having "Niue" in the standard capitalization is helpful.
I guess having a choice of three URIs may be an improvement, although I 
suspect having just one is better. All in all I take the current contents
of 
http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm
to be more useful than
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/1442/country.xtm

Oops I reread

http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/identitycrisis.html

and see I have completely missed the point about subject identifiers etc. Yes 
that point is well-made - but it is not that subject identifiers are so good 
that we need three of them! And omitting the mixed case version of the label 
does appear to be a bug.

Jeremy




Jeremy

Received on Friday, 2 January 2004 04:58:14 UTC