[topicmapmail] Wiki/WebLog application built on top of topicmaps...

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Guy Murphy
| 
| Well, I'm a one-man-band on this project and so for version 1 am
| more interested in getting something implemented so I can get a set
| of requirements for version 2 that's more grounded in reality....
| saying "topicmap-like" does two things... it gives me a big
| emergency exit... and it warns people that the objective of the
| application isn't to implement a topicmap engine.

Fair enough.

| At some point there will be XTM import and export, (and quite
| possibly complete XFML support), but they aren't high on my list of
| priorities, and currently I'm not sure what degree of information
| loss (if any) there might be in importing XTM from another
| application into Conclave.

It depends on how your storage model maps to the SAM, basically. If
they match up you'll be fine; if they don't there will be lossage.
 
| In all liklihood toward the later part of the year I will either
| decided topicmaps are worwhile enough to produce a faithful
| implementation, or I'll bin consideration of topicmaps
| completely.... it's a learning process for me.... the liklihood is
| that I'll sit down with the specs processing model for version 2 and
| simply implement a compliant XTM datastore.

Good. :)
 
| I simply dont know at this stage until I use Conclave for a bit and
| get an appreciation of the stupid things I did, or missed, and what
| Conclave more properly needs for a datastore.... I'm now a firm
| believer of JustDoIt, and figure out what I should have done
| different as I go along. I got tired of agonising over design
| choices =)

I usually do this kind of project the same way. Results tend to be not
too bad, so as a methodology it can't be all bad. :)
 
| Then I've misunderstood aspects of the spec, as I was under the
| imprecion that associations were addressable as topics... 

They are, but that doesn't mean they *are* topics. You can create a
topic that represents an association, and I guess that's what you
mean. This is what SAM and XTM call reification.

| I've just got back into London and am in a flap at the moment...
| I'll revisit the spec and give a more considered reply on the
| subject when I've half an idea as to what I was thinking in the
| first place.

Would be very good to hear your reaction to the spec as someone who
considers implementing it. Note that the mapping XTM -> SAM is in a
different document.
 
| The reason why I'm considering DateTime related topics, is I want
| people to be able to go to Febuary 14th 2003 and to be able to see
| what was altered on Conclave on that day. It also makes it easy to
| construct calendars that way.

I understand, but you can do that anyway, by doing a simple search for
that date. Of course, if you actually *want* dates as topics you can
certainly do it.

| The more choices is demonstrable simply by virture of an ADM I can
| specify an arc pointing one way... I can *choose* to have an arc
| pointing the other way in return if I so desire... I don't have this
| choice with a topicmap...  whether this is a good, bad or
| indifferent thing is a point of debate, but I have more choice for
| modelling it would seem with the ADM.
| 
| With a topicmap I am forced to have bidirectional arcs... this is
| less choice, not more.

Agreed. Is that the only thing ADM has that topic maps do not?
 
| If I'm missing something in the spec that allows me to express a
| directional association *simply*... or even a weighted association
| would do, expressing a 0/1 relation of weights is good enough for my
| purposes... but I'm missing it if it's there.

What you could do is to create a published subject that is used to
identify a role type from which you do *not* want to start traversal.

Something like this would work:
  http://www.guy-murphy.easynet.co.uk/psis/generic/#donttraverse
  http://www.guy-murphy.easynet.co.uk/psis/generic/#has-behaviour
  http://www.guy-murphy.easynet.co.uk/psis/generic/#roletype
  http://www.guy-murphy.easynet.co.uk/psis/generic/#behaviour
 
then you could say something like

  has-behaviour(userrole : roletype, donttraverse : behaviour)

and in your display filter out any association from any topic that
starts with a role which has the "donttraverse" behaviour.

Thus you could annotate the system ontology with this to get the
behaviour you want, and people importing their own XTM files could do
the same.
 
| I appreciate being challenged on these issue though, as it stops me
| drifting off into the ether and reinventing wheels needlessly.

I'm glad to hear that! It would be much cooler to see a Wiki system
based on real topic maps, rather than on something topic map-like.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >