A recent comment about topic map tools reads in part:
First, it took me a long time to understand what tools are out there, what their capabilities are, and which ones are still maintained. (As an aside, you would think the topic map community would have a central topic map based repository/wiki to make it easy for new developers to get started. )
A valid criticism.
I could not name off hand all the currently maintained topic map projects.
Can you?
Moreover, shouldn’t there be more topic map tools?
Adoption of computer technologies in the absence of computer-based tools tends to be low.
Yes?
It’s been a while since I’ve looked, but I recall finding half-implemented or long unmaintained engines in a couple dozen languages and maybe a handful of tools aimed at topic map creation, none of which fully implements things like scope, which I personally found extremely frustrating. I doubt it’s gotten better since then. Topic Maps are still waiting for their killer app.
Sometimes Topic Maps remind me of Lisp, in that topic map engines seem to proliferate the way Lisp implementations do, but you don’t see a whole ton of development outside of that in either space.
Comment by marijane — April 1, 2013 @ 11:41 pm