Re: Ownership of Names (was Re: Public identifiers and topic

W. Eliot Kimber (eliot@dns.isogen.com)
Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:52:43 -0500

At 10:18 AM 9/30/98 -0400, Sam Hunting wrote:
>> So let me stress my key point again: there is no such thing as a "public
>> topic" with no resource. If authors of topic maps need to refer to things
>> as topics that are outside of their maps, there must be a mapping from the
> ^^^^^^****^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> name of the topic to its definition. If this mapping doesn't already exist,
>> then the topic map author must provide it, in the ways I've shown in this
>> post and in others.
>
>This "must" is a question whose answer should be left to the topic map
>designer, since it is a question on which philosophers (that
>includes all of us) disagree and that probably cannot be resolved.

I mean "must" in the sense of "it must be the case that". It must be the
case that for each reference to a topic there is some for of definition for
that topic. If there's not, then the reference to topic is not
communicating anything.

But by "definition" I mean "anything that serves to communicate what the
referencor means by the topic they've named", so the definition could be
very vague.

As an aside, I note that much of this discussion revolves around issues of
the definitions of key terms in the discussion, which is, of course, one of
the purposes of topic navigation maps: to define things. Reminds me of a
certain policital and legal problem faced just now by a certain prominent
head of state. Hmmmm.

I think I'll chase down those suggested philosophical readings now....

Cheers,

E.

--
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W. Eliot Kimber, Senior Consulting SGML Engineer
ISOGEN International Corp.
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