RE: [xtm-wg] A challenge on "the graph"

["Mason, James David (MXM) " <mxm@ornl.gov>]

OK, two comments:

1. I'm not trying to write a TM processor; I'm just trying to understand how
TMs mean (to borrow an idea from John Ciardi). I find labeled graphs easier
to understand than properties, though I look at properties too. Properties
get too close to syntax, and after 19.5 years of dealing with the syntax of
representations, I no longer trust syntax, though I use it all the time.
(Sure, when I got my hands on XTM drafts, the first thing I looked at was
the DTD. I wanted to see what my TM documents were going to look like, what
sort of conversion I was going to have to do on my existing documents. But I
also wanted to see how XTM compared to the model of TMs I'd formed from
13250. There weren't many "model" documents out except some incomplete UML
diagrams, so I didn't have much place to turn except syntax.)

2. The question of for whom the model is written reminds me of a similar
issue that used to come up in ISO standards committees. One of the
procedural issues that used to come up a lot of times was "User
Requirements", which, of course, depended on what a "user" was. There were
two camps on this matter: Some of us thought of end users (why standardize
this if it doesn't meet some need of people who have a job to do). The
professional standards developers thought only of implementers (indeed, some
of them thought their audience was just other professional standards
developers [one reason ODA never got implemented]). 

I think that we actually need to address both audiences. There are people
who need to understand how to build topic maps without building TM engines.
(I consider myself in that class. I may not go so far as to extend that
class to the actual end user at the desktop who's simply worrying about how
to find something on the Web, however: for such a user a TM should be
invisible.) Then there are people who are trying to read as much
documentation as possible and build software to create/manipulate/intrepret
the TMs my sort wants to build. Models need to serve both groups, perhaps to
act as the common ground for both groups, so that the software actually does
what the TM creators think it will do.

Jim Mason

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Sam Hunting [SMTP:sam_hunting@yahoo.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, March 22, 2001 02:01 p.m.
> To:	xtm-wg@yahoogroups.com
> Subject:	Re: [xtm-wg] A challenge on "the graph"
> 
> [lars]
> > And what I would _really_ like to see is the
> > opinions of the other members of this list.
> 
> Agreed vehemently.
> 
> S.
> 
> =====
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