Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Book on Topic Maps
Aha! So work *has* been going on.
Glad to hear it!!
:_) (01)
I am SO looking forward to that book. Thanks for putting
it together. (02)
Jack Park wrote: (03)
> Thanks Eric!
>
> But...
>
> 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.
>
> 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."
>
> 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."
>
> Jack
>
> 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. (04)