[topicmapmail] Re: Simplifying XML Topic Map authoring?

[Dean Allemang]

I don't know about Titan's tool, either in terms of its usability or 
conformance to standards.  And until I see a review that tests it 
against user groups and standards benchmarks, I won't know, either one 
way or another. 

But there's a comment that Murray Altheim made that makes me wonder a bit:

>I'd say that buying products from any of the Topic Map vendors who've
>actually been involved in the development of the Topic Map standards
>is likely to provide much better quality tools than buying from a
>vendor making the overly-patriotic and grandiose claims they do about
>their support for national security, War on Terrorism (caps!), etc.
>

For how much longer will this be true?  One hopes that when something 
becomes a standard, the market opens up, and a number of players can 
jump in with their own offerings.  I would hate to have to use only Java 
compilers made by Sun, or VB environments built by MS, or web browsers 
from NCSA, although at one time, those were the only choices.  Can we 
expect  the Topic Maps standard to break out one day and  become more 
than the sum of its parts, with an open community of vendors, solution 
providers, contractors, researchers, etc. all being able to contribute 
to it?


Dean Allemang
TopQuadrant, Inc.