Re: [topicmaps-comment] skills to create topic maps

[Tony.Coates@reuters.com]

On 28/11/2001 07:49:45 Jon Jermey & Glenda Browne wrote:

>What skills are needed/held by people creating topic maps. I understand the
>linguistic/conceptual side of it, but I am wondering about the technical
>creation. Eg, do you need XML, programming skills or whatever?

I'll add to what the other respondents have written by saying that in the long term, knowing how to work with XML directly should not be a requirement.  However, given the immature state of topic map tools (which is complicated by the lack of an agreed processing model), I would not expect anyone to make sufficient progress without a knowledge of XML.

To be more concrete, you might be able to settle on one of the available topic map editors, and just edit away happily without understanding XML.  However, at some stage you will want to do something with that topic map, and that is the stage where you might have to look at the XML and make some sense of it.  If you stick to one vendor's toolset you might be lucky enough to avoid this, but I would be less confident if you are trying to build a topic map that can be used equally by any tool (leave aside one you can use with XSL-T or other generic XML tools).

Topic map tools vendors are welcome to comment if they think this evaluation is too harsh, and/or to buttonhole me at XML 2001.

     Cheers,
          Tony.
========
Anthony B. Coates
(1) Content Distribution Architect - Project Gazelle
(2) Leader of XML Architecture & Design - Chief Technology Office
Reuters Plc, London.
Tony.Coates@reuters.com
========



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