Re: search labels

In message <m3ekjv2q53.fsf@ontopia.net> on Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Lars Marius 
Garshol <larsga@ontopia.net> wrote
>In topic maps we would not have this problem: a name is a name, and it 
>can be qualified in several different ways (non-preferred, misspelled, 
>obsolete, ...) without obscuring the fact that it *is* a name, and that 
>it *is* somehow qualified (even if the meaning of the qualifier is 
>unknown).

This makes sense, if there is a mechanism for implementing it in skos. 
It seems best, and in accordance with good XML principles,  to identify 
the nature of the label and leave the issue of how it is dealt with 
(e.g. hidden or not) as a presentation issue for the application that 
uses it.

I think that there is a clear distinction, though, between the single 
preferred label, which is used to create links between a concept and 
resources in a catalogue, and alt labels, which are used only within the 
thesaurus to find the preferred label for a concept. I would therefore 
still use preferred/alt as the initial dichotomy.

It may be helpful to distinguish different types of non-preferred (alt) 
labels, such as misspellings, abbreviations, obsolete terms, terms in 
another language, quasi-synonyms and so on.

Mapping and merging from another thesaurus is a different issue, and the 
way terms would be labelled there would depend on whether you considered 
the result to be a single combined thesaurus or a mapping of thesauri 
that remain distinct.

Leonard
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Received on Tuesday, 19 October 2004 09:30:17 UTC