Re: [topicmaps-comment] Topic maps 'float above' resources?

[Kal Ahmed <kal@techquila.com>]

At 09:23 19/12/2001 +0100, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

>* Jon Jermey Webindexing Glenda Browne
>|
>| One advantage of topic maps is said to be that they are not
>| connected to the resources they describe (as, say, subject metadata
>| tags are).
>
>I would put this differently. Topic maps *are* connected to the
>resources they describe (using links, as you correctly point out), but
>in contrast with, say metadata tags, they live outside the resources.
>This is really the key point: you don't need to change your documents
>in order to describe them with topic maps.

And I would add that if you make more extensive use of topic map merging 
than we see in many extant applications, it is possible to take this 
conceptual division between "the map" and "the territory" one step further, 
by creating a topic map of the subjects and the relationships between them 
and a second map containing only the subjects and their occurrences, and 
merging the two to produce a fully "connected" topic map, while still 
leaving you with a fully portable topic map of the subjects which can then 
be reused with a different set of resources with minimal fuss.

Cheers,

Kal