Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

August 25, 2011

Erlang Community Site

Filed under: Erlang,Marketing — Patrick Durusau @ 7:02 pm

Erlang Commnity site: www.trapexit.org

Interesting collection of links to various Erlang resources.

Includes Try Erlang site, where you can try Erlang in your browser.

I have seen topic maps displayed in web browsers. I have seen fairly ugly topic map editors in web browsers. No, don’t think I have seen a “Try Topic Maps” type site. Have I just missed it?

Thoughts? Suggestions?

2 Comments

  1. How about Robert Cerny’s Topincs trial?
    http://www.cerny-online.com/topincs/trial

    It’s more about Topincs than Topic Maps, though. Which would be my primary concern about a Try Topic Maps website, given that the TM community doesn’t seem to have a generally agreed-upon “standard” engine (well, maybe Ontopia?), how do you pick one to implement the site in, and how do you make the site more about Topic Maps than about the particular engine the site is implemented in?

    And what would it do? Let people write XTM by hand? Teach a compact format? Produce visualizations of maps? What does it mean to “try” Topic Maps?

    Comment by marijane — August 25, 2011 @ 7:23 pm

  2. Marijane, good point!

    I suspect given that 90% of people don’t CTRL-F, that offering a hand editing XTM site would be of limited interest. 😉

    First, it would have to be domain specific.

    Second, it would have to be set-up as a “help improve this resource” sort of exercise.

    Third, it would have to offer the user a simple task with immediate feedback.

    Not that I want to write it but imagine a web interface for the Internet Movie Database that harvested photos from online movie sources and presented users with ones that may go with a particular movie. User gets to say yes/no. Some number of “yeses” associates that photo with the movie as well as its source.

    Or that allowed users to enter locations for TV or film productions for the same. (I say that because the Vampire Diaries, which I have never seen, are being filmed in a two block radius of my house.) Such that when a library user asks for a movie/TV show, if it is in their locale, that information shows up.

    Fewer people would create documents if they had to use LaTeX than currently create documents with word processors. Widespread encoding of semantic knowledge is going to require that sort of leap. (I don’t know what that “leap” will be or it would have been the first thing I said.)

    Topic maps are how we produce the effects. But we need to interest users before getting off into the weeds. 😉

    Comment by Patrick Durusau — August 26, 2011 @ 8:46 am

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