[topicmapmail] tagging vs topics

[Ann M Wrightson]

I agree with Lars Marius that there are lots of ways to "do" topic maps
within XML, SGML, or any structured information environment ... here's a few
more suggestions:

- use the original ISO 13250 SGML Architectures concept (now known as HyTM)
to map (appropriate structures of) elements to topic map components. (Do I
remember a demonstration of this with NewsML?) Needs a reasonably good
semantic match; and this is one of the ur-visions for 13250.

- use some locally defined transform or widget (could even be a widget
designed to run on DOMs) to map your local document analysis concepts and
markup to topic map concepts, and spit out the result as a source file (eg
in XTM). I remember a foyer conversation at "Extreme" last year discussing
doing this to generate a set of interlinked indexes for an existing (large)
techdoc manual-set as a topic map.

- use your favourite index extraction or filtering software to generate a
file which is either in XTM syntax, or fits one of the previous two
strategies for generating a topic map

- (a little tongue in cheek at this stage) map your local indexing concepts
to one of the underlying tm abstract modelling levels (RM or SAM), and use
that to drive tm generation from your data direct to some suitable tool API

Cheers

Ann W.