The first meeting of the working group on Topic Maps has been hosted by IDEAlliance.
The meeting reached consensus on the name "XTM" ("XML Topic Maps") for this initiative.
Seventeen people attended the meeting, coming from the publishing, software, and service industries, their end users, and academia. Most of the participants came from the United States. Two participants came from France, and one from the United Kingdom. The organizations represented at the meeting included: Cogitech, DataChannel, George Washington University, Infoloom, McKinsey, Mondeca, OpenText, Society of Biblical Literature, Sun Microsystems, TechnoTeacher, The Bureau of National Affairs, Wrox Press and XMLXperts.
XTM intends to port the Topic Maps paradigm to the Web, by making it explicitly compliant with XML and by improving its visibility on the Web. The achievement of XTM's objectives will require both technical and marketing efforts.
Our mission statement is: "The joint working group (IDEAlliance and OASIS) will engage in technical, educational, and marketing activities to facilitate the use of topic maps based on XML, including but not limited to applications on the Web."
IDEAlliance and OASIS are both eager to contribute to the success of this initiative. The two organizations are expected to join hands and work closely together, sharing control of the proceedings on the basis of respect for each other's independence and procedural requirements.
Through the efforts of both organizations, additional contributing participants, including additional key industrial players, will join the XTM initiative.
Steven R. Newcomb and Michel Biezunski led the organizational meeting. Dianne Kennedy is managing the group. Norbert Mikula represents OASIS, and Pete Janhunen (marketing) and Paul F. Conn (technical) represent IDEAlliance.
The Topic Maps international standard (ISO/IEC 13250) was carefully designed to be compatible with XML, even in the absence of full-fledged W3C Recommendations regarding extended hyperlinking and other matters. As questions regarding the final shape of W3C's designs for these areas are resolved in such forthcoming W3C Recommendations as XLink and XSchemas, the benefits of these Recommendations will be enjoyed in the technical work products of the XTM initiative.
The evolution of XTM will be guided in such a way as to maintain the ability to merge XTM-conforming topic maps with ISO/IEC 13250-conforming topic maps. Therefore, the semantics of XTM topic maps will continue to be alternatively expressible using ISO/IEC 13250.
Topic map templates are ready-made sets of instantiated topic types, scopes and/or associations. They can help communities of users to develop topic maps more quickly, efficiently and collaboratively. The XTM group will develop one or more topic map templates for very widespread use, including a number of public topics. The group will also define mechanisms for registering topics. XML.org is a natural place to register such templates, since it already deals with DTD repositories.
The XTM initiative will provide ways to register existing and future ontologies, taxonomies and vocabularies, as sets of public topics . The use of registered public topics will provide connectivity to knowledge-bearing information sets particularly on the Web, where public topics can greatly enhance the user's ability to find desired information quickly.
The XTM initiative's web site will provide information about its activities on an ongoing basis, with special areas designed to serve the needs of XTM participants as well as the public.
Demonstrations of the Interoperability of Topic Maps
The XTM initiative will organize demonstrations of the interoperability of topic maps when they are created using XTM-conforming tools and methodologies.
An XTM Requirements document will detail the goals and guiding principles of the XTM initiative.
The syntactic constraints that govern XTM-conforming XML instances will be expressed formally as an XML DTD and, ultimately, as an XML Schema.
The Topic Maps paradigm and its expression in XTM will be explained and specified in a document using editorial practices that are congruent with the culture of the Web, the W3C, and the XML communities.
A toolkit suitable for promoting public understanding and adoption of the Topic Maps paradigm will be assembled and published.
A plan for a public launch event for the XTM initiative will be created and executed.
The next meeting will be held in conjunction with the XTech 2000 conference in San Jose, California at the beginning of March. If you would like to join the XTM initiative, you might want to plan to be there.
This report was prepared by Michel Biezunski, Dianne Kennedy and Steve Newcomb.
Last updated: January 31, 2000