My most recent attempt at Explaining Topic Maps.

Better late than never…

Topic Maps 2008 - Day 1

Alex Wright of New York Times held the opening keynote of Topic Maps 2008. Wright talked about “Hierarchies, Networks, and the web that Wasn’t“.

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I am currently at the 2nd International Topic Maps Conference, held in Oslo, Norway; Topic Maps 2008. Today was tutorial day.

This is what I got some insight into today (they are all bits and pieces, but I include the notes here for sharing).

Open Source Topic Map Portals

Arnar Lundesgaard, the lead developer of Zope Topic Maps, held a 1/2 day presentation on ZTM3. For me, it was vital to attend this introduction to ZTM3, as I have high hopes for it … and we will def. be building sites on it in the not too distant future.

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The first version of WP2TM is just around the corner.

I’ve set up a separate page for WP2TM, and will be posting news about it there (see also: releases feed).

Update: I’ve just made the plug-in available for download.  Happy blogging

I’ve changed the Wordpress Topic Maps Plugin a bit, so that the produced topic map is more correct (thanks for input :)). I’ve tried using PSIs where possible (from e.g. Ontopedia and Techquila), and have sought inspiration (=>”copy+paste”) from Dmitry’s XTM feed over at SubjectCentric.com. A few issues remain:

• I’ve had problems getting the darn get_tag(_x) functions of Wordpress to work, and hence do not yet output Blog Post <-> Tag associations. I intend to figure this one out, though, and create dc:subject associations scoped by the post’s author.
• Should the subject identity of a category (category PSI anyone?) take the form of a subject indicator, or a subject locator? In other words: is it what you find at the end of the URL that is the category? I believe not, so I’ve left these as indicators for now … objections?
• XTM fragments for individual posts (todo)
• Users should be able to set options via admin interface (next version, I guess)

I’ll make a new home for the plugin at www.topicobserver.com/wp2tm, so that this blog won’t fill up with entries like the one you just read…

It seems like the program for Topic Maps 2008 has been released (in a provisional form). It is also possible to register for the conference.

Update Feb. 15th: the program is now official. Be sure to check it - or the excellent list of Presentations - out!

Dmitry wishes to see more blogs in XTM format.

Now, this is far from being a Topic Maps driven blog, or blog in XTM-format, but I figured it would be fun to write a Topic Maps “feed” plugin for Wordpress (inspired by Lars Marius Garshol’s Blog Metadata in Topic Maps).

So from today (or evening, if you wish), this blog delivers an XTM 1.0 feed. The plugin’s source code is not perfect — and kinda ugly, but feel free to look at it and/or use it if you wish to (I wont guarantee anything, of course, not even the accuracy of the outputted topic map ;). (more…)