Change
Deprecate instance_of on topic
Issue description
When writing a topic map, Topincs uses a non-standard instance_of property on topics to hold the type information. This is no longer necessary since topics are instance of at most one type.
Developer comments
The %instance_of% property is an interesting case.
It can hold a topic reference (a string) or an array of topic references. Given a topic T1, its instance\_of array has 2 entries. Does this mean the topic is instance of two different topic types T2 and T3? Or does it mean it is instance_of one topic type T4 for which we know 2 ways to refer to it.
Generally in an array of topic references you can never decide whether these references are a merging instruction, meaning: i found out that all these topic references refer to the same topic (case A). Or do they simply mention different topics (case B).
Now with the new single type approach instance_of is no longer necessary since there is a type property on Topic. But also above problem vanishes, the only "array" of topic references are the locators on Topic. And this is the cohaesion necessary to distinguish case A and B from above.
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Work sessions
| Start |
2026-03-31T08:41:58
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| End |
2026-03-31T10:04:18
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| Participant |
Robert Cerny
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