[sc34wg3] CTM: Realistic use cases or toy examples?

[Jaeho Lee]

Subject-Object-Verb order is just one issue, but not the major one. I don’t
want get into that argument here.

 

I just wanted to point out that naturalness in one culture may be
awkwardness in other different culture.

That is why I advocate a kind of culture-neutral notation with semicolon. 

If one desperately need it, and the other can tolerate with it, well, IMHO,
I would go with it.

 

If you want an explanation of why it is awkward, not just because of word
order, please let me know.

I can give you a 5 min lecture :) 

 

---
 Jaeho Lee
 The University of Seoul
 

From: sc34wg3-bounces at isotopicmaps.org
[mailto:sc34wg3-bounces at isotopicmaps.org] On Behalf Of Xuan Baldauf
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 6:47 AM
To: Discussion of ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps
Cc: rho at devc.at
Subject: Re: [sc34wg3] CTM: Realistic use cases or toy examples?

 

Jaeho Lee wrote: 

[...]
If the topic maps on the left column in the comparison list are written, for
example in Korean, it would be really cryptic because it doesn't give enough
clue to distinguish between associations and topics.
To me and probably to people in other cultures, the left column is HORRIFIC
to read.
Structural boundaries such as semi-colons are definitely needed for
readability, IMHO, even in English.
  

I think your point of cultural bias regarding what makes a language readable
is quite valid.  However, if there is only one person telling some language
instance is horrific to read, it is indistinguishable from personal bias.
;-) So it would be nice if we could gather input from more people with
non-Germanic cultural background (i.e. Japanese? Chinese? ).

Nevertheless, do you think, in your own opinion, that some
indentation-standard (though not mandatory, but customary) like

john
    isa singer
    isa guitarist .

provides enough structure?

As Korean is mainly a Subject-Object-Verb-Language AFAIK, would

john
    singer isa
    guitarist isa .
  

look better?

I'm asking this to find out whether it is possible at all to maximize CTM
usability while being as far as culture-neutral as possible, or whether
there exist multiple usability maximums, one for each culture, which compete
against each other in such a way that it would be more wise to just choose
one of these usability maximums, even if this means that culture-neutrality
is grossly not achieved. If culture-neutrality is not achievable (while
achieving other good CTM properties) in principle, there is not much point
in argueing in favor of a specific cultural POV, except when it comes to
increasing some part of the CTM userbase at cost of a smaller decrease at
some other parts of the CTM userbase (i.e. maybe we should have a lot of
Chinese-like syntax if we expect a lot of CTM authors being from a Chinese
cultural background).


ciao,
Xuân.

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