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Thu, 1 Apr 2004 13:00:00 GMT
Notice! This blog is no longer updated as such, and the new spot to point your feedreaders and blurry eyes are https://shelter.nu/blog/ This also means no more comments here, and especially not you spammers, you filthy floatsam of the internet!
Thoughts on Topic Maps
I had a flare of inspiration last night to write about the philosophy of trust, based on
Are they right, though? The thing is that I've had similar (or probably exact; memory is a bugger) conclusions about The general issue raised is that the There are a number of smaller and big applications using Let's talk about the real world, and the need to reflect it in terms of Peter points this out quite rightly. We call the cross-over to "Huh? I can do this database just as well as Topic Maps using plain vanilla SQL databases! What's the fuzz?" That's right; what's the fuzz? The thing is that if you can do the same, then don't do it, and most Topic Mappers know this. Their applications are outside of the scope of the traditional way of doing things, hence so few examples of them. We are hard-working people who write specialised and clever applications, and so we don't really have the time to write "how to sort your CD collection with Topic Maps." If a relational real-world thing that has been solved a million times over is what you want, then Topic Maps will be a pain in the hindsight, and you'll say "Topic Maps are hard to learn! I was fiddling all last night, and I didn't have time to buy the wife some hockey-boots!" Get smart; that is why you'll dig into Topic Maps, and people who knows about those extra steps, who knows the value of semantic-rich metadata instead of the crap we mostly put out these days, will prevail with Topic Maps. It is not about showing someone a real-world problem, because they are mostly solved by proven method already. It is about showing people better ways. It is why we call it a paradigm shift, and not simply "another way of doing it"; it will tilt your mind, and push you further. That is why Peter raised a few questions on a few mailing-lists and asked if anyone knew about easy applications or frameworks for There are no hackable applications that I know of you can use to learn topicmaps. This means that there are no beginners tutorials that let you hack a useful application together based on topicmaps. All the tutorials I've seen teach you topicmap concepts and how to create a topicmap. They don't help you create an application to organize your CD's. So, in Peter we trust, and even though I've seen most of the responses (I added some myself) he still says there are no hackable applications that you could use for easily learning about To state the reality; There are lots of applications, some half-done, some bigger, some complex, some easy, some small, some big, some free, some commercial, some ugly, some pretty, and so on and on. If we are to take at face value that there are no hackable applications, please let us know the formular you're using. Hmmm, he puts a qualifier on it; All the tutorials I've seen teach you topicmap concepts and how to create a topicmap. They don't help you create an application to organize your CD's. Maybe he's right, but I have seen tutorials and / or documents that tell you how to use What is the purpose of Peters blurb? That Topic Maps can be hard for some? Anything that doesn't apply to? That there are no hackable application? Hogwash. No real-world tutorials? not true. That RDF with FOAF is suceeding? Politics. That we need more of whatever? Help us out. What we need is not 'this is hard', but 'this is clever.'
Read the full story at < Thoughts on Topic Maps >
Permalink (Thu, 1 Apr 2004 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (4) | Topic maps
Peter has followed up on my blurb, and I answer him shortly at the comments section of it;
archives/002676.html
( Sun, Apr 4 2004 )
Why don't you guys who knows Topic Maps like your own pockets, create an application that solves Peter's problems? I understand his frustration, and I'm kind of frustrated about it too, although I think I have understood the basics in the philosophy of Topic Maps.
Alex ( Sun, Apr 4 2004 )
Actually, after my blurb with peter, I sat down this weekend and wrote a tutorial about how to sort your CD collection with Topic Maps. :) I'm hoping to push it out at the end of the week.
( Mon, Apr 5 2004 )
There you go! :-) I'm looking forward to reading it.
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