[topicmapmail] graphic language for describing TopicMaps

[Thomas B. Passin]

Stefan Lischke wrote:

> I'm just writing a complete documentation about a content management 
> system with topicmaps i builded. Therefore i have to describe a lot of 
> topic maps and PSI sets.
> When i had done this work with plain XML, i could describe the data 
> structure with XSD. But since there is no TMCL i have to do it in a 
> visual way with digrams.
> But is there a standardised way of creating a digram which describes a 
> topicmap or a topicmap typesystem which does not only include topics, it 
> also includes association types with specified roles and cardinalities.
> 

 > How are you guys describing your topicmaps? Are you using rectangles for
 > topics and circles for associations, how do you show that something is
 > scopeable?

I like to draw them as rectangles for topics and ovals for associations. 
  Sometimes I use hexagons (stretched out) for occurrences.  I haven't 
felt a need to show scopes, by and large, but that could be doone 
various ways, like another association (but that's complicated), or the 
name of a scopeing topic in brackets (more compact).

But it depends on what you want to show.  E-R, as Jan said, can be good too.

> Should i use UML?

I really dislike UML and have never felt it communicates a topic map 
well to me, so I would avoid it, personally.  Native UML sematics for 
relationships are not really that well defined (I guess the latest 
version is getting better).  UML would probably be at its best for 
inheritance hierarchies, should you want to represent any of those.

You could look at my paper from Extreme 2003 to see  a few samples in 
the manner I like.  I draw them with Powerpoint (or any such vector 
drawing tool).  It is at

http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/Proceedings/html/2003/Passin01/EML2003Passin01.html

Cheers,

Tom P