[topicmapmail] Announcement of XML Schema for ISO 13250 Topic Maps

[Martin Bryan]

Bernard

> Some features of ISO 13250 have been *deliberately * let down by XTM 1.0
> for clarity and simplification's sake, through collective reflexion of the
> AG, like facets for instance. (I consider it a good thing, for I really
> never understood what the hell facets represented and what they could be
> used to).

That's because you never saw a requirement for them. Those of us who have
identified the requirement consider them essential.

>So I wonder what is going to happen for XML schemas still using
> those "obsolete features" (obsolete from XTM viewpoint).

My schema is designed to make the full power of ISO 13250 available to those
who need it. Especially it was designed to cope with the function declared
to be obsolete in XTM of being able to use element names to identify types
of occurrences and association roles.

>They won't be
> XTM-conformant, will they ?

Subsets of the schema will be transformable to XTM, just like any
SGML-conformant Topic Map.

> But OTOH, is XTM 1.0 completely conformant to
> ISO 13250, since it let down those features ?

Most decidedly not - this is the reason for my rejection of it. (Note my
choice of verb - its very deliberate.)

> Is the ISO 13250 bound to
> stand still or will it be reviewed to be more coherent with XTM ?

You cannot restrict an ISO standard to conform to a subset defined by an XML
DTD. (Should we restrict SGML to be the subset defined for XML for all
possible applications? I think not, but then I am totally biased.)

> And what
> is the role of XML Schema in all that ?

XML Schemas provide techniques that let us rethink how we should map easily
manageable topic maps (created without specialist tools) to XML.

> On the air for 2001 is the convergence and hopefully unification of
> XTM-RDF. That seems to be the line in W3C, as we have seen lately in
> Washington XML 2000. What is the position of ISO there ?

ISO has no position on this. Anything W3C wants to do they can do.

> Are we going to have "ISO-conformant" applications, and "XTM-conformant"
> applications and then
>  "XML-Schema-for-ISO-13250-conformant" applications ... and what next ?

I wrote the XML Schema for ISO 13250 Topic Maps spec to show just how easy
it is to map Topic Maps to schemas, and to show the power you can gain from
using schemas and XML links properly. Whether anyone other than myself has
this as a requirement remains to be seen.

Re:Could you be more explicit on what you mean by  the following ?

"The insane decision to use a fixed tag set made the use of XTM an
impossibility in my environment. I need to be able to use explicit tag
names".

I have to train non-technical people working with general-purpose tools that
have not been specifically designed to create topic maps to generate the
relevant data during the last few days of a frantic monthly update cycle.
The topic maps need to be updated in the last hour or so of this process.
They are the most time critical part of the process as they are the last
thing that can be updated. By selecting simple to understand element names I
can manage this process effecitively. By forcing them to enter type
information as attributes I cannot hope to have them correctly create
XML-based Topic Maps. Converting my Topic Maps to XTM is relatively easy if
I need to communicate with others, but no way do I intend to author in that
format when I can define a schema that lets me use my existing application
in a conformant manner and still take advantage of XLink.

Martin