Hi all,
I was browsing through some of the recent discussions, and some
questions/doubts I have had in the past about topicmaps came together in
this question: what would be a topicmap application that would be simple
to hack together (for a simple hacker person), and useful.
Our target person is the O'Reilly-reading hacker. She may not know what
a "data-model" really is (although it sounds kinda cool). She
understands XML, but is no wizard. She knows relational databases, and
some scripting language (Python, PHP, ...).
When she learned relational databases, there were simple, understandably
useful applications she could hack together in a day. (A database of my
CD's.) After doing this, she would not go back to doing websites without
databases.
When she learned XML, there were simple, useful applications she could
hack together in a day. (An RSS reader.) It took a bit longer to really
*get* the value of XML though. But luckily there were many toolkits
built into her favourite scripting language. She did go back to doing
apps without XML after this, but it was always in the back of her mind,
and she used it in some real projects.
I'd like to help this person to play around with XTM.
I would like to ask all the (fairly) brilliant minds on this list to
stop for a second and help me out here. Thanks :) What would be the
simplest useful topicmap application? Could we write a tutorial for
someone to hack this together in a weekend or a week? Would they
understand the value of XTM after doing this?
Thanks for any ideas!
Cheers,
Peter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My book on information architecture is out, http://iabook.com has a
sample chapter.
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