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

[Robert Barta <rho@bigpond.net.au>]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 03:14:25PM +0000, Tony.Coates@reuters.com wrote:
> 
> On 29/11/2001 19:34:16 "H. Holger Rath" wrote:
> 
> >- And finally (I couldn't resist) about TMs and XML. XTM is the
> >interchange syntax and I would never ever edit or tweak a TM in XML.
> 
> What a great loss, though, if XTM is nothing more than an opaque transmission 
> format between topic map engines.  If everyone took that view, I think it would 
> kill a lot of the existing enthusiasm for topic maps, ....
> ..
> Assuming that XTM is just a private format for the use of topic map engines 
> greatly undervalues its possibilities, in my opinion.

Psychology aside, XML is _JUST A_ flexible data interchange format.

XTM is in my view unsuitable for authoring. There is a good reason why 
text-oriented formats like

   http://www.ontopia.net/download/ltm.html
   http://topicmaps.bond.edu.au/astma/astma.html

(and maybe others) exist as our experiments have shown. On average, the quality
of a AsTMa= student maps is considerable higher than of maps written in XTM.
I'm not convinced whether graphical development environments really speed up 
authoring.

One problem I always had with XTM is that it allows me to encode only
factual data. As soon as I need syntax for constraints (TMCL) or queries
(TMQL) or updates I have to move to a completely different notational 
backbone. We here try to remedy this with a language family concept:

  http://topicmaps.bond.edu.au/astma/

but this further down the road.

\rho