[topic_maps] Re: [topicmapmail] Multiple members in XTM
associations
Christoph Froehlich
cfauto@folge2.de
Fri, 13 Feb 2004 11:53:17 +0100
Hi Jens
Am Fr, den 13.02.2004 schrieb Murray Altheim um 01:57:
> Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> > * Jens Kanschik
> > |
> > | I indeed considered to use TM4J and using it would certainly be
> > | better, but at the moment I would like to write an applet which
> > | means I have to be careful to keep the size small. Even though the
> > | bandwidth increases all the time, I don't like it if the user has to
> > | wait until half a MB has been transfered.
> >
> > That makes sense. I can see why you'd want to do this, though this
> > will definitely increase the amount of work necessary. Unfortunately,
> > an XTM interpreter is a non-trivial thing to write.
> >
> > | I was a bit inexact, actually I will use really a graph layout and
> > | don't want to restrict myself to trees. Of course one has to think
> > | carefully about how to show constructs like n-ary associations (one
> > | node for the assoc. which is linked to all members), scoping (using
> > | different colors/styles) etc., but I think the relationship between
> > | TMs and graphs is close enough to give it a try.
> >
There is a subproject of tm4j, called panckoucke, which targets this
question as well: How to transform fragments of a topicmap into graphs
that are suitable for visualisation and navigation? In a way, panckoucke
is meant as a helper for developing frontends for tm4j. Currently,
panckoucke transforms into a properietary graph model, but I would be
enlighted to change this to something like graphml or gxl.
A second subproject, TMNav, sits on top of panckoucke and visualises its
results. Among others, TMNav uses the touchgraph library that Murray
mention below. TMNav is a desktop application, not an applet.
So since we are working on very similar questions, maybe it is possible
to share efforts and work out in common, how transformation of topicmap
fragments into more lightweigt structures is best being done.
What do you think?
Bye
christoph
> > Worth a try it most certainly is. I'd be very interested to see your
> > results, so I hope you report back here when you have some.
>
> A great deal of the functionality of what you're trying to accomplish
> I've implemented in Ceryle. But as you indicate, even TM4J is a bit
> much to download, and the number of jar files to support TM4J are
> even larger than it is (this is true of a lot of applications, of
> course).
>
> But it does seem a shame to reinvent the wheel where that's not
> necessary, and I might suggest using the same graph visualization
> toolkit that I did, TouchGraph. I've heavily extended TouchGraph
> (TG) for use in Ceryle, but Alex Shapiro, TG's author, designed
> it to be used also as an applet, and you could perhaps extend it
> slightly (well, as much as necessary), and use it rather then
> develop your own. In Ceryle, for example, if you turn up the
> hyperbolic distortion all the way (something available in TG but
> not implemented in its demo), turn on auto-centering (something
> I had to create using a Thread to tweak the centering of the
> selected node on a periodic basis), well, you have something even
> more powerful than what I've seen of HyperGraph given the use of
> zoom, rotate and locality lenses. I think Alex is to be commended
> on creating a very functional toolkit, and a number of projects
> have taken advantage of it.
>
> As for some sort of XTM processor, a lightweight one that did
> most of what TM4J does would be very cool, though in looking at
> TM4J I don't know what you could trim, apart from not having the
> storage backends (i.e., doing everything in memory), and perhaps
> dumping the utility classes. Perhaps you could try to take a copy
> of TM4J and doing something like that to see how small you could
> make it, rather than building it up from scratch. As a contributor
> to Kal's project I know its code pretty well, and as Lars Marius
> says, it's non-trivial (which is putting it mildly).
>
> You can find more information about TouchGraph at:
>
> http://touchgraph.sourceforge.net/
>
> Murray
>
> ......................................................................
> Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
> Knowledge Media Institute
> The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
>
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Christoph Froehlich <cfauto@folge2.de>