[topicmapmail] TM for Linux desktop

[Sam Hunting]

[patrick]
> Sounds like a great idea to me! (But then I am rather biased in terms of
> both Linux and TM.)
>
<slash>

[carlo]
> > Today Linux, MAC, and MS all use conventional menus for their desktop
> > environment (and applications). Suppose one or more of the Linux desktop
> > UI projects (gnome, KDE, Ximian, etc.) were convinced to create a topic
> > map navigation scheme for their UI; a newly installed application would
> > associate itself to the desktop menu/navigation system by adding some TM
> > fragments to the topic map.
> >

Perhaps off topic, perhaps not --

It would be nice to have a terminal that, rather than navigated the file
system, navigated a topic map (with occurrences on the file system, or
elsewhere). I proposed (and to some degree implemented) such at:

    http://www.etopicality.com/public_presentations/KT_2002/14.html

One nice thing about this approach is that it gets one thinking about how
to administer the topic map (a "Topic Map Management System" ;-) as one
would administer a linux system -- for example, there are probably some
parts of the topic map that you would not want to allow users to edit or
perhaps even view; the idea of users with privileges seems relevant
here...

Interestingly, there is a similar effort (and written by a real
programmer!) in the XML world called XSH:

    http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/07/10/kip.html

which is a shell for navigating XML documents. How much nicer to navigate
the topic map graph -- and how productive it might be.

Probably these thoughts are OT, but nice to see some lateral thinking on
how to get topic maps very broadly adopted.

Sam Hunting
eTopicality, Inc.

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Co-editor:  ISO Reference Model for Topic Maps
  Topic map consulting and training: www.etopicality.com
Free open source topic map tools:  www.gooseworks.org
  XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web.
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