[topicmapmail] YALTM ("YALTM Ain't LTM")

[Rich Morin]

At 8:40 AM +0100 10/17/05, Kal Ahmed wrote:
>One quick question first - why YAML?  Is it because there are parsers /
>serializers available for it already?  Or is there some other compelling
>reason for not simply using LTM?  Unless I've missed something, it seems that
>YAML does not have any schema mechanism - there is no way to validate that
>you haven't misspelt a tag for example, which to my mind would be a big
>issue.  Anyway, if YMAL works for you, that's great...and if it means I can
>draw topic maps in OmniGraffle then that's greater than great ;-)

I've used YAML quite a bit as a way to encode data structures.  The syntax is
very obvious and easy to make self-documenting.  If the YAML is designed in
a reasonable way, the data structures load into my scripts in a usable form.
Finally, YAML is easy to read, edit, generate, parse, etc.

I realize that YAML has assorted deficiencies regarding standardization,
schemas, etc.  However, I can deal with these fairly trivially by writing a
filter that converts YALTM to, say, TMDM.


>if ... I can draw topic maps in OmniGraffle then that's greater than great ;-)

It should be possible to use OmniGraffle both as an input mechanism and as a
display tool.  I have sent them a couple of notes, however, regarding the fact
that OG has no way to encode arbitrary attributes for edges and nodes.

That is, you can attach both display and pop-up text to an edge or node, but
you can't (AFAIK) make "hidden" annotations that could be used for follow-on
processing.  This is a problem because it would be nice to say things like
"this edge is of type foo, as defined by URL bar".  If you agree that this is
an important omission, I'd ask that you ping them, as well...


>1) I recommend that you look at TMDM ...

Thanks for the comments and analysis.  Lars also pointed me to the EBNF,
which I had forgotten about.  I'll get back to the list when I've got
version 0.2 in hand.

-r
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