[topicmapmail] tagging vs topics

[Mason, James David (MXM)]

What Tony points to is something that's coming up in my work, too. I need to
deal with lots of little pieces of text. I hate to think about managing them
individually, but I can't get them easily into XTM because some of them
include little bits of internal markup that's really essential (like
"<sup>235</sup>U". I really want to have this markup in the text that I'm
moving around in XTM because I want to display it from within a TM browser.

Jim Mason

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Tony Coates [SMTP:Tony.Coates@reuters.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, April 17, 2002 6:43 AM
> To:	topicmapmail@infoloom.com
> Subject:	RE: [topicmapmail] tagging vs topics
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Lars Marius Garshol [mailto:larsga@garshol.priv.no] 
> 
> > What do you mean when you say "point a topic to..." in this 
> > case? Do you mean how to make that particular sentence an 
> > occurrence of the Microsoft topic? Well, you can do that by 
> > using a URL with a fragment
> > reference: file://something/something/file.xml#1937529 [1]
> > 
> > Then you would have pointed to the <topic> element, but it's 
> > not really all that useful, I think.
> 
> I think there is a problem of differing perspectives here.  The existing
> topic map cognoscenti have viewed XTM as a transfer syntax for use
> between topic map engines.  So, the question of integrating XTM and
> document XML never arose, since topic map engines don't store documents.
> Indeed, XTM doesn't even allow non-topic-map XML fragments, on the basis
> that the topic map paradigm should be used to encode all information and
> relationships.  This just won't work for documents, just as it is
> awkward (although possible) to store richly marked up documents in a
> relational database.
> 
> The usual story is that you should use the topic map to point into your
> document.  That allow providers of topic map engines to wipe their hands
> of the problem, but does little to alleviate the document handling
> problems of users.  This advice tells users that if they use topic maps,
> they will be forced into multi-file solutions, and that may not be a
> palatable story.
> 
> It would be useful to compare this with RDF and NewsML.  RDF can
> annotate any general XML document, and does not care that there is
> non-RDF in the document (well, RDF treats all XML as RDF, but that is
> another story).  It certainly allows you to build rich information into
> the document file, and have a 1-file solution.  Similarly, NewsML can
> have XML content embedded into it, and can relate topic information in
> the NewsML structure to content in the embedded XML.  Again, a 1-file
> solution is possible.
> 
> This is not to say that XTM as is should be changed to allow inclusion
> of general XML.  But it does beg the question as to whether there should
> be an equivalent embeddable markup that allows XML documents to carry
> their own topic map of what is in the document, and what external items
> are related to the document, without requiring external files.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 		Tony.
> ========
> Anthony B. Coates
> XML & Search Architect
> Chief Technology Office
> Reuters Plc, London.
> Tony.Coates@reuters.com
> ========
> 
> 
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