Re: Mapping files?

* Murray Altheim
| 
| As I've said to Kal recently, I don't think we even missed at 81/19:
| I'm not advocating any changes to XTM at all. I do think we need to
| make some clear and simple documentation, a roadmap of what the RM,
| SAM, XTM, PSI, and ISO 13250 specs accomplish, i.e., what a
| developer needs to read and understand in order to build
| TM-compliant tools, and finally, see publication of TM-compliant
| open source tools, ideally, with good examples (ala Xerces).

I agree. That's (in part) what I tried to accomplish with
  <URL: http://www.y12.doe.gov/sgml/sc34/document/0323.htm >
 
Any feedback on that document would be very much appreciated. I'm
planning to make a new and more detailed version before the London
meeting, so...
 
| Our biggest barriers right now to acceptance are understanding (in
| clear and simple language*, geared for implementors) exactly what it
| takes to build a compliant topic map engine, and secondly, what it
| would take to build a compliant topic map application. 

My goal for the SAM and the new XTM syntax specification was to create
something that would indeed tell topic map engine implementors exactly
what they needed to know to build an interoperable implementation. XTM
1.0 doesn't do this. It's readable but fails to answer most of the
important questions.

I don't for a moment believe that the SAM/XTM specifications will
actually be comprehensible to your average web developer. We need
different tutorials for them, probably ones which focus on the tools
and the techniques.

| I realize some were critical of Annex F of XTM 1.0, but that IMO was
| a very reasonable attempt to write something distinctly functional
| for developers to follow as a set of rules rather than have to
| understand an abstract model or some unfamiliar language. Along
| these lines, an XTM test suite with documentation is an *excellent*
| idea.

XTM 1.0 is *not* sufficient to make it possible to create a test
suite. SAM + new XTM + Canonical XTM, on the other hand, *will* be.  I
would love to be able to start an XTM Conformance OASIS TC in London,
but at the moment it looks as though if I don't chair it and do all
the work it won't happen. (And I can't do it. I'm already tied up with
SAM/XTM/TMQL.) So if anyone is willing to join the TC or help out with
creating the test suite please raise a hand. (People willing to chair
the thing should raise two hands. :-)

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >