* James Aylett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-05-23 15:43+0100] > > 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.
I'm fine with either design; was just a plea for the chosen design to be documented clearly. "Note: the description of multiple authors of an entry does not in itself imply that each of these descriptions is about a different entity" would be plenty. > 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. Fair point. Again I'm not arguing that distinctness be part of the spec, just that people have a tendency to assume that distinctness is intended, so a few words to be explicit on Atom's assumptions would be worthwhile. I'm reminded of http://internetalchemy.org/2005/04/unique-name-assumption "Two sons and two fathers went to a pizza restaurant. They ordered three pizzas. When they came, everyone had a whole pizza. How can that be?" > 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. I'm fine with allowing it. But there are two quite different designs here that look the same at the instance level; only the Atom spec can arbitrate between users who take differing interpretations. Dan > James > > -- > /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > James Aylett xapian.org > [EMAIL PROTECTED] uncertaintydivision.org
