MineMatch makes extensive use of "attribute inheritance" when it is estimating the degree of matching during a comparison exercise. It stores inherited attributes alongside the attributes entered during the description of a deposit or model. By checking the "Show all inherited node items" checkbox, the user is able to view all inherited attributes. Since they add considerable clutter to a description, inherited attributes are usually not displayed.
When describing things, people usually concentrate on attribute values that are present in the entity being described. However, sometimes declaring the absence of an attribute value may be an important distinguishing feature of an entity.
When comparing the attributes of two entities with a view to measuring their similarity, and facing the situation where an attribute value is declared as being present in one of the entities, and not mentioned at all for the other entity, the comparing agent has the following alternatives:
(a) to assume that the silence with respect to the second entity implied the absence of the attribute value, and hence a lower quality of matching, or
(b) to allow for the possibility that the sought-after attribute value is present, but was simply left out of the description of the second entity, hence not lowering the quality of the matching.
Placing a tick in the "Silence implies absence" checkbox causes MineMatch to assume (a) above while scoring the quality of a match, while unchecking the checkbox causes it to assume (b).