Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Book on Topic Maps
Thanks Eric! (01)
But... (02)
I didn't write it. I wrote a couple of chapters, edited, and created the book.
Some other really smart people wrote chapters (17 in all) including one by
my two snappers, Nefer and John. (03)
I'll be talking about that book and more, mostly about Douglas Engelbart's
work in the keynote address to
Extreme Markup Languages in Montreal, end of next week. The title of my
talk is "Douglas Engelbart, Open Hyperdocument Systems, XML, and Everything." (04)
Here is the abstract:
"We look at markup languages in the context of complex, urgent problems
facing humanity. The talk intends to develop a context in which the
evolution of markup languages is seen as crucial to the evolution of tools
capable of supporting and augmenting what Douglas Engelbart calls the
Capabilities Infrastructure of Networked Improvement Communities. If time
permits, a demonstration of an engineering prototype of a system aimed in
that direction will take place." (05)
Jack (06)
At 04:21 PM 7/24/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Delightful! At last, a book has become available which explains
>the XTM (XML Topic Maps) standard -- and one which was written
>by our very own Jack Park!
>
> Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web,
> by Jack Park. ISBN #0201749602
>
>My copy is on the way.
>
>Background
>--------------
>XTM is an ontology-definition mechansim which is intuitively
>more appealing and easier to visualize than RDF. Like HTML
>or XML, it can be reasonably read and edited in plain-text form.
>(You can edit RDF, too, but understanding what you have in
>plain text form is nearly impossible for any non-trivial ontology.)
>
>Theren lies the promise of XTM. However, my early attempts
>to guage its usefulness ran into problems. Directing a series of
>"how would you do this?" questions to a collection of experts
>invariably led to a range of responses:
> * That's impossible.
> * That's trivial.
> * That's possible, but difficult.
>
>Lacking the background to deciper the responses and formulate
>my own conclusions, I decided that perhaps Topic Maps were
>not yet really ready for prime time.
>
>This book may well herald the arrival of Topic Maps on the
>"prime time" stage. At the very least, it should generate enough
>understanding to make it possible to follow arguments about
>how it can be used. (07)