[sc34wg3] The Norwegian National Body position on ISO 13250

[Mary Nishikawa]

At 08:05 2003/04/13 -0400, Michel Biezunski wrote:
>Mary,
>
>I would like to understand better what you mean.
>
> > You said it better than I ever could have.
>
>What do you mean by "it"?

Steve is describing the current exponential growth of Topic Maps in Norway 
and elsewhere.

I can verify that this is happening. I have had developers keep me up at 
night sometimes at at 1:30 in the morning on IRC explaining one thing or 
another, handing out references, etc. Of course I enjoy it, otherwise i 
wouldn't be doing it.

There is great enthusiasm in the open source community and universities; 
also elsewhere. They are asking about SAM and what they need for TMCL. A 
graduate student has volunteered to help out with usage scenarios for TMCL. 
This is the atmosphere that we are in now. It is very exciting.


> > What you describe is what we
> > hope will happen in Japan.
>
>What do you mean by "what you describe"?

I hope that the same exponential growth can happen in Japan.  The leader of 
the ZOPE users group in Japan is interested in topic maps and I have tried 
to be a bridge between the Norway and Japan ZOPE developers.
There is no documentation in Japanese, so it is hard for this to go forward.

It is not easy without a translation of the documents that are being 
written now.


> > It is very important that SAM and XTM Syntax
> > move to CD.
>
>This is procedural.

When a document goes to CD, it is important because then we formally begin 
the translation process.

Michel you said, "I think when you qualify the SAM as a "very robust piece 
of computer science" you are exactly right."

So, it is important to have SAM translated.

>What about the question I
>asked to Steve Pepper and that he has not answered
>yet: what is the nature of the incompatibilities
>that several software products are exhibiting
>re: Topic Maps?

With all this explosion, there are more people trying to implement topic 
maps. There is no conformance suite yet.
All the more reason to get CXTM out and somebody to initiate conformance 
testing, as an OASIS committee possibly. This is good news.


>Should we try to review the standard in order
>to accommodate this new reality of people outside
>the group claiming they are doing topic maps by
>looking at what they have done, or should we say:
>everybody who was not in the committee should not
>be allowed to call their products topic maps?
>What kind of standard are we doing? Closed or
>open?

Please come to the topicmaps IRC  channel and you will experience what is 
going on. I don't think you would write this way then.


> > Then we begin the translations and software companies will
> > begin to look at them.
>
>The whole point is that software companies are
>already doing topic maps.

Not in Japan, really. We need the translations.

>My point is that we
>need to look at what they are doing. It might
>happen that some software is really important for
>the market and that it's good that it can claim
>compatibility with topic maps.

I guess you could look though the logs of the IRC channel logs as a 
beginning, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/irc/irclog/

I hope this this addresses what you were most concerned about.

Cheers,
Mary