The table would have a simple block structure. See my message in this
thread December 20 or thereabouts. Legal variant types need not be
identical, but can be put in equivalence classes e.g. {geographic,
hierarchicalGeographic}. I believe it makes sense to view variant as an
equivalence relation: Two variants of a given authoritative form are
variants of each other (transitivity). A MADS record should still make
sense if a variant form were made authoritative and the authoritative
form made a variant (symmetry). If the authoritative form is,
conceptually, an identical "variant" of itself, well, there you are.
The children of <related> should remain uncontrolled. With "other" being
a valid value of the type attribute, anything could conceivably
cross-reference anything else.
--Andy
>>> [log in to unmask] 01/03/05 5:26 PM >>>
> > So perhaps leaving this unvalidated is
> > best?
>
> I'd say no. I think it opens up more problems than it solves.
What I meant was, we'd need to come up with a table of which
authority/related combinations are valid and enforce based on that.
Seems
like that would be a nightmare (though I haven't really thought it
through)
and we'd probably get the table wrong anyway.
But if we could ascertain that authority and variants are always the
same
type then I'd favor validating that.
--Ray
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