[sc34wg3] Typo in 5.4.2 Identifying Subjects

[Patrick Durusau]

Greetings,

Located what appears to be a typo in 5.4.2 of ISO/IEC 13250-2.

Text reads as follows:

**********5.4.2*************

EXAMPLE Consider the URI http://www.topicmaps.org. If given as the 
subject locator of topic A this would mean that topic A
represents the information resource identified by this URI. However, 
using it as the subject identifier of topic B would mean that
B represents what is described in that information resource. At the time 
of writing this would seem to be the organization known
as TopicMaps.Org. (Note: the organization; the real-world institution 
known by that name. This is different from the subject of A,
which is the web page itself.)

Note the uncertainty in the last sentence above. The information 
resource in question is a subject **indicator** for topic B, but it was
not written to be a subject indicator (that is, it is not a published 
subject indicator), and so is not entirely unambiguous with
respect to what subject it indicates. Nor is it guaranteed to be stable, 
so at the time of reading it may indicate some other
subject, or it may no longer exist. (emphasis added)

************/5.4.2********************

Note that in the example, the URI http://www.topicmaps.org is said to be 
a "subject identifier" for topic B. In the following paragraph, that 
changes to make it a subject **indicator** for topic B.

Not sure what it means to say that the "information resource" in 
question is ambiguous? May be poorly written, confused, etc., but hasn't 
the distinction (a la Pepper's "Curing the Web's Identity Crisis) 
already been made by the choice of subject identifier or subject indicator?

Not altogether happy with the "guaranteed to be stable" language but not 
sure I have a useful alternative to offer. PSI's are "supposed" to be 
stable but not sure we should indicate that stability should be assumed 
by users. How to even test for stability dips into implementation issues 
outside the scope of this document but it is something we will need to 
think about in PubSubj.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!