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

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Personally I use LTM for this. I've done a topic map of about 2000
| topics, associations, and occurrences in this way (Scripts and
| languages), and it's perfectly OK. As long as there's only a single
| author, and that author is sufficiently technical, this works just
| fine.

* Scott Tsao
| 
| I am trying to get ready to create my first XTM document.  So, I
| would like to know:
| 1) Where can I find LTM-related resources?

There's a description of the LTM format online at
  <URL: http://www.ontopia.net/download/ltm.html >

That, and a text editor, is really all you need to get started on
writing LTM topic maps. Ontopia's Omnigator can display LTM topic maps
(provided you call them something.ltm) just like it displays XTM topic
maps. If you want your topic map in XTM format you can just export it
from the Omnigator using the export plug-in.

| 2) What did you have before using LTM (e.g., a spreadsheet listing
| all the topics and their associations)?

Actually, I didn't have anything at all. I just started writing,
extending and modifying the ontology as I went. Later, when I got more
serious about the topic map, I bought Daniels and Bright's "The
World's Writing Systems" and used that as the data source.

| 3) What are the "sufficiently" technical prerequisites for the
| author?

Well, basically they need to understand the basic concepts of topic
maps, and be sufficiently technical that they don't balk at the idea
of authoring topic maps in textual form. I would say that anyone who
can write HTML pages in a text editor can use LTM. 

--Lars M.