[topicmapmail] Request for Participation in Topic Maps Wiki Project

[Murray Altheim]

Markus Ueberall wrote:
[...]
> *What is it all about?*
> 
> Despite of the fortunately steadily growing interest in Topic Maps, so
> far there is no project/medium (at least to my knowledge, that is) which
> succeeded in both presenting a current overview of all domain related
> ongoing (and past) activities as well as involved parties and actively
> supporting ((or 'demanding')) communications between individual
> interest/working groups (keyword tag interconnection) _in the long run_
> i.e., in such a way that it could serve as _the_ primary source of
> information or contact point for interested parties, respectively, not
> replacing but complementing existing offers of information: by means of
> announcement, summary, annotation, and, if applicable, conservation.
> One self-suggesting possibility is the installation and maintenance of a
> _dedicated_ Wiki, which allows participants to both present themselves and
> collaborate (in a controlled manner) analogous to Wikipedia. However, in the
> past, comparable approaches always suffered from understaffing or lacking
> support.

Markus et al,

While I'm not certain that our goals are entirely in harmony, I
thought I'd mention that I'm just in the process of posting both
the new CeryleWiki [1], and as soon as I can get the materials posted
to SourceForge [2], the source code for my longstanding project
Ceryle will be available as well. Ceryle is a standalone, open source
Java application that relies very heavily on XTM 1.0 for much of its
functionality. It is in a lot of ways a Topic Map application, and
will increasingly be so as I add another whole layer of functionality
this year based on features I've been adding to JSPWiki [3] (in short,
having the wiki harvested as a Topic Map which will be made available
as a web service). I've been doing some rather heavy development in
JSPWiki over the past year and find it a good platform, especially if
one is using TM4J since they're both Java apps.

The reason I state above that I'm not sure our goals are in harmony
is that Ceryle's Topic Map functionality is based on XTM 1.0 (using
TM4J) and I have no plans to migrate that to XTM 2.0; it will remain
an XTM 1.0 application. I've been working on this project for the
last five years, and I frankly hope that its success may spur further
interest in XTM.

As you may know, the TM4J project [4] was designed and largely
developed by Kal Ahmed. After some discussions late last year, its
seems that Conal Tuohy and I will be providing support for the
project in the coming year, so I have a vested interest in its
success. We don't have ambitious plans to begin making marked changes
to the project, more in the line of fixing bugs, possibly adding a
new backend and some minor features or improvements.

Additionally, while I've been lax in keeping my promise to Michel;
I'm also on board for updating and maintaining the historical XTM 1.0
web site at topicmaps.org [5], including any of the recoverable
materials from my old doctypes.org site, which we used in 2000 as
a development/documentation site. This again is about XTM 1.0 and
is not meant to compete with the current ISO efforts.

BUT, given all the above, I do have plans to fill out the CeryleWiki
site with a great deal more information about XML Topic Maps 1.0,
including tutorials and other materials, particularly as they pertain
to using Ceryle. Those who are interested in participating (either in
editing the wiki or in the Ceryle project itself) are welcome; just
send me an email and I'll be happy to provide a login (the wiki is
not set up for anonymous editing to avoid spam). There's a hell of
a lot of documentation to write on Ceryle -- I've been too head-deep
coding to spend a lot of time writing user documentation, much less
developer documentation, so help will be VERY WELCOME.

I'll send a more announcement-like message to this list regarding
availability of the CeryleWiki as well as soliciting coding, testing,
documentation, etc. help with the Ceryle project, once both my domain
name is switched over to my new ISP and I've got the code up on
SourceForge. I thought I'd send this message now since you guys are
all hot to trot in the New Year...

If you think the CeryleWiki might suit your needs, contact me off
list and we can chat.

...and Happy New Year!

Murray

[1] currently at:  http://altheim.4java.ca/ceryle/wiki/  until I get
     my ISP switched over, then at:  http://www.altheim.com/ceryle/wiki/
[2] Ceryle at SourceForge:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ceryle/
[3] JSPWiki at:  http://www.jspwiki.org/
[4] TM4J Topic Maps for Java:  http://www.tm4j.org/
[5] http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray06 at altheim.com>                              ===  = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     = =  ===
SGML Grease Monkey, Banjo Player, Wantanabe Zen Monk               = =  = =

        In the evening
        The rice leaves in the garden
        Rustle in the autumn wind
        That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu