[sc34wg3] PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT: something new coming soon

[Murray Altheim]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> * Michel Biezunski
> | 
> | In order to provide the necessary link between the TMM-RM and the
> | SAM, I have given to Steve Newcomb a simplified version of the XTM
> | DTD to play with, and Steve is now working on describing it in terms
> | of the TMM-RM. This DTD is provisionally called STM ("Simple Topic
> | Maps") and contains the elements that are actually the only ones I
> | have been using in my commercial applications since I am
> | implementing Topic Maps.
> 
> I'm a bit surprised by this. If you want to implement SAM as an RM
> application, why did you create a new XML DTD and do that as an RM
> application? That won't be SAM-in-RM at all, will it? Sounds to me
> like you are creating STM-in-RM instead?
> 
> Also, I hope the STM document will contain copious disclaimers to the
> effect that "this is not a new topic map interchange syntax"?

I don't know of Michel's STM DTD, but from his description it sounds
as if he's simply using a subset of XTM. There'd be no harm in that,
nor would it change the underlying model.

If STM is a *new* syntax, then what Michel needs is the RM in order
to define his syntax. If the RM has any use, it'd then be a rather
simple matter of transforming STM to XTM, or STM to Hytime. In
fact, it'd not be a bad idea to consider writing Linear Topic Maps
as a legitimate expression of the RM rather than simply an
authoring syntax.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something fundamental, which is
certainly possible at this point...

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

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