[tm-pubsubj-comment] XTM vs. XFML and Facet Maps

[Murray Altheim <m.altheim@open.ac.uk>]

Maybe I've been asleep, but I apparently missed announcement of
a markup language named XFML, "based on the topicmap standard."
It does seem to blend some of the ideas of topic maps and some
of the work going on in the Published Subject TC [hence I've
posted this message to both groups, though not cross-posted].

   eXchangable Faceted Metadata Language
   http://xfml.org/
   http://xfml.org/spec/

Anyone have any experience with this? My first impression is that
it's a bit dubious design, but I've not downloaded and played with
the software or spent a lot of time investigating yet -- not clear
why development of a new markup language was entirely necessary
(perhaps merely subsetting the XTM syntax would have preserved
some sense of how they relate), or that XFML is actually an
improvement. My interest in it comes from the idea of "faceted
taxonomies," which in itself is a valuable concept.

 From the XFML home page:

   "Unlike Topicmaps, XFML is designed to be easy to code for,
    and easy to understand. It trades power for ease, yet retains
    some extremely powerful [sic].

    Publishing XFML is conceptually similar to publishing RSS: you
    get many of the same advantages: it is easy, and you get a lot
    of incoming links and additional functionality possibilities
    that would otherwise be extremely difficult to obtain."

Is missing some core features (such as subject identity), yet
still claims to preserve the ability to merge topics. I suppose
that if it's legitimately a subset of XTM, then it's possible to
write some sort of converter.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

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