On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 10:35:07AM -0400, Robert Sayre wrote: > > It would be good if Atom were clear on whether repetition of the > > exact same name implies the two authors are distinct (eg. things > > written by father/son pairings, where they have same name). > > Why would that be good?
I'm -1 on having the spec say anything. I'm +0.5 on the spec explicitly saying that you can't infer anything. I don't see this as something that has any actual technical impact - I think people are trying to clear up a possible ambiguity that is useful to allow. One reason why I think it's not a good idea to restrict this is that if we say "repetition of the same atom:name implies distinct Person referents", we're implying that you shouldn't have the same Person referent using different names (eg: pseudonyms) - something that is impossible to detect, and so can't reasonably be part of a spec. And if we're not trying to disallow the same person being referred to by two distinct textual strings, then why are we disallowing it for two identical textual strings? Seems an arbitrary non-technical semantic to me. James -- /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\ James Aylett xapian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] uncertaintydivision.org
