[topicmapmail] What tools to use for colaborative topicmaps editing

[Kal Ahmed]

On Saturday 14 December 2002 06:57, Marius OANCEA wrote:
> My question is:
>     What tools you sugest to use when the working environment is:
>
>     * 40 editors editing the same topicmaps
>     * the 40 editors are domainexports to informatics experts
>
> The ideea is that I have a lot of books and I want to create a topicmap=
s
> to replace all this books.
> In a colaborative environment you neet tools to avoid conflicts. What d=
o
> you propose here?
>

Question: Do the 40 editors really have to work *on the same topic map fi=
le* ?=20
Or do they simply need to be able to work on the same ontology ? If it is=
 the=20
latter, then you can have the 40 editors work separately and merge the 40=
=20
topic maps they produce. If each starts with a topic map representing the=
=20
basic topic map ontology and with a set of editorial guidelines (or other=
=20
constraints such as the constraints you can express in Protege), then you=
=20
should end up with mergeable and consistently produced topic maps.

> The editors knows about topicmaps concepts but does not know anythink
> about XML, XTM ..... resulting that we need a application with a nice G=
UI.
>
> How do you control the workflow of the information ?  I mean, some of
> the editors has to have only rights to give work to others. Some editor=
s
> will only have rights to edit german text and only about some topics
> (experts in music will edit info about musicians).
>

This slightly changes things...you could approach this by creating just t=
he=20
topic map files that the user has the rights to edit. However, my gut fee=
ling=20
is that with 40 editors, this would be difficult to manage unless you can=
=20
simply split the work into 40 separate pieces and distribute it that way.=
 And=20
it gets harder still if you want to *enforce* access controls on a set of=
=20
topic map files. However, perhaps when you sit down and look at how the w=
ork=20
would be organised (perhaps based on how it is currently organised), you =
may=20
find that it is pretty straightforward to do. Remember that merging can a=
lso=20
be used to "include" commonly used topics from a base topic map (and that=
 you=20
can use read/read-write access controls to prevent that base topic map be=
ing=20
accidently overwritten).

> After  the editing is done (in the editor opinion) many quality control
> steps has to be done before publishing.
>
> There are any tool(s) to solve all this propose ?
>

Not out-of-the-box tools that I know of. You should probably be prepared =
to do=20
some work with one of the existing topic map engines to get the kind of=20
environment you need.=20

Cheers,

Kal

--=20
Kal Ahmed, techquila.com
XML and Topic Map Consultancy

e: kal@techquila.com
p: +44 7968 529531
w: www.techquila.com