Re: [topicmaps-comment] TMs & XTM [Was: skills to create topic ma ps]

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

[Mason, James David ]


> I second Tony. Editing a TM in any XML encoding (I've used my own as well
as
> XTM) is a pain, but I've sure done it. I wouldn't want to maintain some of
> the monsters Tony builds by editing the XTM representation, but I'm doing
a
> map of about 1000 lines right now, and it's quite managable in XMetaL if I
> take a little care. While I'm developing a TM application, I can't think
of
> any other way I'd rather do it.
>
I basically agree with Tony and Jim, but I find lately that I'm creating
maps using my own javascript/browser app - it produces javascript code for
persisting the maps.  I can edit that by hand when I need to because it is
fairly readable.  I can export to XTM though, and I have a stylesheet to
produce my javascript format from xtm.  These maps are smallish- a few
hundred topics perhaps.

I think that people who have just encountered topic maps need convenient
ways to produce maps to experiment with so they can get a personal feel for
how they work and what can be done with them.  To do that you need more than
five or ten topics, and you need some scopes and occurrences too.  Of course
you need a convenient and easy app, too, and I'm not convinced we've really
got a really suitable one for that purpose.  The Ontopia demo is OK, and
there is Semantext and TMDesigner (which is neat except on my system it dies
frequently).  The K42 demo is too hard to use and demands too much about the
map design, I think, for this purpose.

Cheers,

Tom P