Transform variant names to topics and associations

Variant name is a scoped property of a topic. Usually it is used to label the topic with a specific name. Scope is a set of topics that describes the type of variant name. However, topic map author may use the variant scope to address not only the type but also the appearance or the source of the variant names. In other words, the semantics of the variant name scope is not always the same. Sometimes topic map author may want to transform the implicit relation between a variant name and it's carrier to an association between variant name carrier topic and a new topic created for the variant name.

Example of transforming variant names to topics and associations

This example is based on a topic map kindly provided by Patrick Durusau, WG3 Topic Maps Convener, patrick @ durusau.net.

The idea of the topic map is to model variations of references. Each variant name models one name variation of a name specified with topic's base name. Variant name scope is used to model sources of name variations (See image below). For example, the variant name [RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", IETF RFC 2119, March 1997, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt. appears in two sources of #wss-rel-SwA-profile-1.1-errata and #wss-rel-Swa-profile-1.1. Reader should also notice the lack of typical language and display scope topics.

Now, the Wandora user wants to transform these variant names to topics and associations. She selects menu option Topics > Variant names > Transform variants to topics....

Wandora opens up a dialog used to specify association type and role topics for variant name associations. User may also select to delete all transformed variant names.

Wandora user selects some topics for type and roles.

And starts the transformation by clicking OK button.

Looking at the original variant name carrier topic reveals some changes. Original variant name carrier topic plays now a role in 3-ary associations with scope-role-players and name-role-players. Scope-role-players is the scope topic of original variant name and name-role-players is a new topic created out of variant name.

Looking at specific scope-topic views now a list of all name variations used in that particular source. Looking at specific name-topic views now a list of all sources where the name variant appears. Both lists were impossible (at least in Wandora) when name variations were modeled using variant names.