[topicmapmail] TM for Linux desktop

[Sam Hunting]

> Sam Hunting wrote:
> [...]
> > 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,
>
> Are you thinking command line or thinking GUI?

Definitely command line -- why I was diffident about intruding into a GUI
discussion -- but heck, the subject line is "TM for linux desktop" and the
command line is definitely part of that.

> A lot of Ceryle's
> functionality is command line operable, from XML validation and
> well-formedness checking, LTM and other format conversion to XTM,
> etc.  If you meant command line, is there something specific you
> had in mind?

See the first URL above, for my KT presentation. Basically, it seems to me
that if its sensible to navigate the linux file system with its tree
nature (ok, a graph with links) its sensible to navigate a topic map with
its graph structure. One would cd to a topic, etc.

> Editing seems a bit difficult, but perhaps query if
> we had a query language, etc.

Not perhaps so very hard, if we are dealing with URIs, names, and small
chunks of #PCDATA most of the time (as at least with XTM we are or -- some
would say should ;-) -- be doing. XSH makes it pretty easy to work at this
level. Not that I'd want to author a humongous topic map in the shell, of
course, but adding value to an existing map shouldn't be so hard.

Of course, there's lots of back end stuff to work out ...


> Murray
>
> ......................................................................
> Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
> Knowledge Media Institute
> The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .
>
>    The midrange prediction shows [global] temperatures increasing by
>    about 3 degrees. Under that scenario, about 1.25 million species,
>    or 24 percent of the terrestrial species of plants and animals,
>    will be extinct or on the way to extinction in 50 years. With a
>    rise of more than 3.6 degrees, 35 percent of species would be lost.
>    In Queensland, Australia, 85 percent of birds would face extinction.
>    In the Amazon, 87 percent of the plants would vanish.
>    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/08/MNGU045MCV1.DTL
>
>    Asked how he could boast of being an environmental advocate when
>    he owns five Hummers, Schwarzenegger instead took credit for the
>    vehicle's popularity. "Eleven years ago, I took the military
>    Hummer and I wanted to prove you could turn it into a civilian
>    Hummer... Now, as you know, it's the most popular SUV."
>                      -- the "environmentalist" Arnold Scharzenegger
>    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/22/MN4522.DTL
>

Sam Hunting
eTopicality, Inc.

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