[topicmapmail] Open Source Options?

[Steve Pepper]

* Gary Kopp
|
| My real question is whether I have any "inexpensive" options
| for off-the-shelf topic map editing software.

Hi Gary,

I highly recommend Ontopia's free ontology-driven editor Ontopoly [1].

I have been using it recently for several of my own topic maps (although not
yet the Italian Opera topic map) and found it a joy to work with. (I can say
that now that I'm no longer with Ontopia and in any case wasn't very
involved in the tool's original design and development :-)

Like any tool that does a lot of clever stuff, the interface takes a little
getting used to, but - believe me - it's well worth making the effort.

Creating topic maps is a two-step process: First you design the ontology.
(In your case you could start with the MyThesaurus ontology, based on SKOS,
which is included in the distribution.) Then you populate the topic map via
a forms-based interface that is automatically configured for each topic type
based on the information in the ontology: input fields and drop-down lists
are generated for creating identifiers, names, occurrences and associations,
and you even get to control the order and appearance of those fields.

You should be aware that a deliberate design decision was taken (in order to
keep the user interface simple) *not* to support the full panoply of Topic
Maps features, in particular reification, scope, and variant names, in the
first version of Ontopoly. I would dearly like to have scope (at least on
names), in order to support multilingual topic maps. I have also
occasionally missed having sort names (which require variants).

The good news is that there are workarounds for both of these: Firstly,
Ontopoly supports typed names (an XTM 2.0 feature which goes some way to
providing multilingual capabilities). Secondly, Ontopoly respects
unsupported Topic Maps constructs, provided they are valid. This means you
can tweak your XTM file outside Ontopoly (for example, by adding a <variant>
element using an XML editor) and then continue editing in Ontopoly. You
won't be able to edit the unsupported construct, but Ontopoly won't barf
either, nor will it remove the additional information.

Ontopoly is part of the OKS Samplers, which also includes the Omnigator
topic map browser.

Steve

[1] http://www.ontopia.net/download/freedownload.html


| -----Original Message-----
| From: topicmapmail-bounces at infoloom.com [mailto:topicmapmail-
| bounces at infoloom.com] On Behalf Of Gary Kopp
| Sent: 26 July 2007 05:57
| To: topicmapmail at infoloom.com
| Subject: [topicmapmail] Open Source Options?
| 
| Warning: newbie is here. I have studied the theory and application of
| topic
| maps, and I would like to use them in the building and management of
| thesauri for various technical writing projects. But from what I've been
| able to determine this is a technology that is currently only being served
| well by various commercial companies, all of which seem to have set
| relatively high prices for their topic map "suites." There are some open
| source APIs (TM4J and PHPTMAPI), but no actively maintained open source
| topic map creation/editing software that I've been able to locate. The
| closest I've come is Wandora, which is only "free" for non-commercial use
| (and I haven't found anything concerning pricing for commercial use).
| 
| Am I missing anything? I'm thinking about building my own editing
| environment using, say, TM4J, but in the interim I would sure like to be
| able to create and edit topic maps with an inexpensive, preferably open
| source, tool. If such a beast doesn't exist, another option I'm
| considering
| is creating thesauri using SKOS, taking an RDF-based approach. There isn't
| much tool support there either (there is at least one open source editor,
| ThManager, that might suit me), but my gut feel is that custom coding
| around
| SKOS/RDF would be easier than around a TM API, especially since I can hook
| into existing RDF editors and extend them to deal with the SKOS
vocabulary.
| 
| I guess a topic maps forum isn't the right place for me to march out my
| brainstorming on topic maps vs. RDF approaches to thesauri. My real
| question
| is whether I have any "inexpensive" options for off-the-shelf topic map
| editing software.
| 
| --Gary Kopp
| 
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