[topicmapmail] TM for Linux desktop

[Carlo Moneti]

On 2004.01.13 13:58 Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
|
|* Carlo Moneti
||
|| I sure would like to get your comments on this idea and it's
|| viability.
|

* Lars
|
|I quite like the idea. I think topic maps really shine at helping
|people find their data more easily, and having a desktop tool that
|made accessing and updating a personal topic map would, I think, be
|extremely useful. Something like this is just begging for someone to
|step up to the plate and do it.
|

Thank you all for the comments of this thread. It got a little side-tracked 
from the start; but it has shown me that people are thinking about it. What 
continues to intrigue me is the idea of a topic map engine framework, much 
like a GUI framework, which is used to build a variety of applications that 
would comprise a desktop environment (as gnome, KDE, etc., do). In fact, 
the GUI framework would grow an API to interact with the TM engine, to the 
point that new developers would see the TM approach as the cool 
architecture style of the GUI framework, without necessarily knowing much 
about the theory of TM, thesauri, taxonomies, faceted classification, etc.. 
But they would come to realize that knowledge as they become more 
experienced with the framework.

The other thought is the prospect of topic map storage data models---which 
often look like they could store any kind of data (a generic data 
model)---facilitating a sharing of data among applications and thereby 
paving the way to easy application integration. Coupled with the TM/GUI 
framework and desktop environment, the possibilities seem promising.

Any other thoughts?

Carlo Moneti
http://arsteca.net