[sc34wg3] CTM: The arguments for standardization

[Lars Marius Garshol]

It seems clear that there are still people on this list who don't
believe it's necessarily a good idea to standardize CTM. I also get
the impression that not all of the arguments for have been understood,
so here is another attempt to explain the rationale.


Although CTM is an alternative to XTM, the fact that there are people
who prefer editing in XTM to syntaxes like CTM makes no difference.
The point is that there are lots of people who prefer a syntax like
CTM over XTM, and these people already use one of the two non-standard
syntaxes (LTM/AsTMa=). So here, already, we have a reason to
standardize: people are using multiple, competing proprietary
solutions in this area. No matter what we may think of such syntaxes,
the only way to change this is to create a standard alternative. And
that's what CTM is about.


We are creating TMQL, which at one point will have a part 2 (updates)
where people can add new topic map data to a topic map. For this to be
possible there has to be a syntax for topic map data that fits inside
TMQL. The idea is that we'll create this syntax now, call it CTM, and
solve the problem above together with this one at a single stroke.


This has the benefit that we can make sure that the three syntaxes
(CTM, TMQL, and TMCL) stay in sync. We want to ensure that scope, for
example, is expressed with the same delimiter in all of these
syntaxes. The best way to do that is to start with CTM now, so that we
can do all three in parallel.


Some people have expressed the reservation that CTM is "only for
techies", and that therefore it shouldn't be standardized. There are
several reasons why this doesn't hold:

  a) We're not doing this because "techies" want this; we're doing it
     because we need it for TMQL.

  b) An *additional* argument is that technical things like topic maps
     generally catch on with technically minded people first, and a
     large subset of those people would prefer a syntax like CTM over
     XTM.


As was pointed out by Jim, most papers about topic maps, and a large
number of the emails about it, too, need to be able to show topic map
examples. XTM is sufficiently verbose that a couple of tiny examples
may be enough to bring you over the page limit for your paper (or
exhaust the patience of the readers of your email). Today I often use
LTM for this, Robert uses AsTMa=, and many other people use XTM.  It
would be a major improvement if we could reduce the number of syntaxes
used for this to one (CTM), which it would then be much more
reasonable to expect people to at least be able to read.


One objection has been that such a syntax means a higher bar for
implementors, and more work. It does mean more work if anyone wants to
implement all the parts of ISO 13250, but it's not required to
implement CTM, and an implementor who wants to minimize the investment
would probably do well to implement CTM and drop XTM.  (Note that
having two syntaxes is unlikely to be a problem; converting from the
one to the other with a tool that supports both is going to be
trivial, provided we get the design right.)


The objection that CTM means more effort for the committee likewise
doesn't hold, because we will have to do this as part of TMQL anyway.
The only difference is that we are moving it forward in time, to be
able to get rid of LTM and AsTMa= and to make sure we get three
consistent syntaxes.


I hope this makes it clearer why the proponents of CTM want it. I also
hope it makes it clear that the "I think editing XTM is OK"-argument
is not an argument against standardizing CTM.

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