[topicmapmail] A somewhat new topic maps format

[Robert Barta]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 12:53:01PM +0200, Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> No, this isn't anything fancy or official, but I've made a compromising
> format of the XTM 1.0 format; Compacted and Simplified XTM (CSXTM) that
> is a compact and simple version of XTM 1.0, and that is optimized for
> speed and ease of use. It was especially made for handling topic maps
> in XSLT and similar technologies. Still an early version. Suggestions
> are welcome.

Alexander, et.al.

I perfectly understand the motivation to create a simplified XML-clone
of XTM that can be authored and post-processed. Anyway, if someone
wants to have *both* benefits - simplicity, rapid authoring and XML
processing via XSLT - you may also use AsTMa= and convert it to XTM.

This can be automated, either using the PerlXTM package or simply
using the online converter at

  http://astma.it.bond.edu.au/cvt/index.mc

Here an excerpt from one of my Makefile-s:

----------------------------
.SUFFIXES: .atm .xtm

.atm.xtm:
        TMPFILE="/tmp/atmcvt.$$$$"; \
        cat $< | perl -MURI::Escape -pe '$$_ = uri_escape($$_, "^A-Za-z");' >  $${TMPFILE} ; \
        (echo -n "format=on&action=download&atmcode=";cat $${TMPFILE};echo) | POST http://astma.it.bond.edu.au/cvt/index.mc > $@ ; \
        rm -f $${TMPFILE}
----------------------------

If you need an xxx.xtm and you have an xxx.atm (in AsTMa=) then a

  make xxx.xtm

on the command line will throw this file (URL encoded of course)
against the online converter. At least on a UNIX platform.

\rho