I have started some serious work on the xSiteable Publishing Framework which combines a lot of things I've been working on for the last few years. This is a framework that's been brewing for quite some time, and hence I've decided to can the xSiteable project as a stand-alone thing; the good stuff developed for xSiteable version 0.95+ will be part of this new framework. Here is the rundown;

• Support for DocBook documents, xSiteable templates and content, MARC XML (which is exciting to all the librarians out there!), and Topic maps (using CSXTM).
• Conversion tool : MARC XML to Topic maps which I'm personally very excited about. I have basic support already finished.
• Small-scale cache machine support for PHP (and Java, C# and Python close behind) making it really scalable and flexible.

The most important and exciting part of this framework is that I can now create fully dynamic sites based on sets of MARC XML records. The project that triggered this is a smaller folklore project where I was handed a set of MARC XML records with annotations. Not only can I now display info about this set, but show off the synergetic effects of putting them into a Topic maps instead of a traditional RDBMS. My prototype is looking really good, and I'll share more info here as I go along.

For librarians : If anyone wants to join me in my quest for a MARC XML => Topic maps brigde, please drop me a line. What is needed the most is an MARC compatible ontology.

Permalink (Wed, 16 March 2005 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (1) | Topic maps Knowledge management Content management

For syndication of my pages, I use RSS. It is an old and simple format that all aggregators today can grok. But as more and more sites gets groked, more and more crud gets added to the format.

Lately a lot of people have gathered around to create Echo, a new format for syndication, very much like the good ol' RSS, only bigger, techier, all-swallowing and ... well, more complex. Do we need another complex format? In my eyes we don't, but then I'm not really into all that complex blogging; I want to say something with a few links, and RSS handles this without any problems. All the content management I leave to the http-workings of the net.

The people at Six Apart have got a list of "Why we need Echo" up. I'm obviously missing some important detail about this whole mess;

1. The RSS spec does not say how to encode content.

Why would you want to crud up the format further? In my eyes, RSS is about metadata, not the storage-container of the data itself. If you've got some advanced content, link to it.

2. XML-RPC is severely lacking in internationalization (I18N) support.

True, but not something that can't be fixed.

3. Content is represented differently in an API than it is in a syndicated feed.

Non-important; they are dealing with two different things.

4. Confusion over elements.

This is not the fault of RSS, but how people who shouldn't fiddle with the RSS "specs" mess things up. Besides, the confusion seems more to do with people not listening to Dave Winer than anything.

5. No universally-supported and -defined extensions.

Again, extensions are application-specific stuff. Why put it in as a part of the standard at all? Extensions are just that; it extends the standard. Duh. What else do we have the darn namespaces for anyways? What people fail is to create reasonable RSS feeeds where the extra crud adds to the feed, not break it.

I hope some brave soul could tell me why excactly we need to rush down another non-compatible lane just when aggregators, people and businesses are just starting to get the hang of RSS. Sigh.

Permalink (Mon, 30 Jun 2003 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (2) | Content management

Again, clever boy James Robertson of Column Two has produced an excelent whitepaper called Where is the knowledge in a CMS? outlining where the actual knowledge resides in a Content management system.

Also, from the announcement, he points to two related articles;

Losing sight of the content in a CMS

Why spend millions on managing content that no-one understands or needs? This article provides tips for getting the best value out of your business content.

Using usability to direct KM systems

KM has much to learn from usability, which can provide many useful starting points for structuring and managing KM projects.

This is all interesting stuff, and one that really inspires my current research for creating a Topic maps based content management system; when people add or edit information, where in the CM system are these changes reflected? In James' whitepaper I find that the approach of the CM system is pretty traditional, which I also think is the purpose of it, so while not adding to a revolution in how Knowledge management is or should be done, it certainly points us in important directions.

Permalink (Mon, 5 May 2003 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (0) | Content management Knowledge management Knowledge and information

As reported here before, James Robertson of Column Two fame, had a survey about consumer opinion about CMS vendor websites.

The results are not surprising; people don't care for salespitching, but takes advice from folks they know. read on for more.

Permalink (Wed, 9 Apr 2003 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (0) | Content management

After some time of serious hacking, the new xSiteable version 0.8 is out the door. It contains a number of interesting features;

A GUI admin tool, flexible ontology, automagic taxonomy, blogging, metadata feeds (RSS, XFTM, DC, RDF, XTM), XTM imports, a host of new templates and supported items, and lots of new documentation.

This release is the cleaned-up version of the very package that runs my site, so do check it out either at the xSiteable homepage or directly at SourceForge.

Permalink (Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (0) | Topic maps Content management Knowledge and information

This excelent article, written by Marc de Graauw, is a great way of lending topic maps to people who live in the world of relational databases. Quite a few of the programmers at work came back with a "Aha!" after reading it, saying they finally understood what I have been talking about for the last year.

Permalink (Thu, 13 Mar 2003 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (0) | Programming Topic maps Content management

James Robertson at Column Two has a web survey about CMS up on his site, and I encourage everyone to help out.

What do you think about the quality of information provided by the CMS vendors' websites?

This survey is not being run on behalf of the vendors. Instead, I have developed it with the aim of improving the overall state of the marketplace. My hope is that if vendors have a better understanding of what their customers want, they will adjust their sites to match. This can only serve to benefit both customer and vendor alike.

The complete results of this survey will be freely available.

Permalink (Mon, 10 Mar 2003 13:00:00 GMT)| Comments (0) | General Content management