[topicmapmail] Anyone looked seriously at XFML?

[Thomas B. Passin]

[Murray Altheim]

> I'm specifically curious if XFML really provides anything that
> XTM couldn't with some PSIs provide. I've been looking into
> faceted classification schemes for the last year or so and would
> rather use an existing technology within my application than use
> something both new and different, if possible. If I don't use
> XFML I'll likely develop a faceted classification/grounded theory
> schema of PSIs for use in my existing XTM/visualization code.
>

Interesting.  My take on it is this. In the same way that Topic Maps is a
sort of design pattern for knowledge representation - one pattern out of an
large and indefinite number of possible patterns - that xfml is likewise a
design pattern.  As their web site points out, you could regard it a a
subset of topic maps.

I noticed one thing xfml has that Topic Maps do not.  They have an
occurrence strength. I have often though that it would be good to indicate
the strength of the players in an association, because I think that in real
life the strength of a relationship plays an important part in our thinking.
In fact, I am sure that we can temporarily change thoses strengths to let us
focus on different aspects of a situation.

I think that the xfml restriction that a given topic can only be in one
hierarchy would seriously hurt most of the uses that I am interested in, but
for some other uses it might be quite good.

Cheers,

Tom P