Re: [Tm4j-developers] Proposal for new TM4J package [Long]

[Gerd M. <ge...@sm...>]

On Wednesday 08 August 2001 10:59, you wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> You will probably have seen the recent posting from Florian Haas about work
> he has done on implementing the TM4J API on top of a DOM representation of
> an XTM document. The approach he has taken is interesting in a number of
> respects:
>
> 1) The use of XPath queries to provide the topic map indexes
> 2) The maintenance of an underlying data structure (the DOM) which much
> more closely represents the source XTM file being processed.
>
> My feeling is that were this package to be developed, it would provide a
> robust foundation for building a topic map editing package that can do some
> of the useful editor-type things that the existing in-memory package could
> not do. For example, the DOM implementation could be made to preserve
> element ordering, and so preserve toppic map elements on a "round-trip"
> editing cycle...this is something which would be a big advantage for manual
> editing. Also, having an integration with an XPath processor would enable
> an editor to construct arbitrary queries quite easily.
>
> Florian and I have discussed how this package relates to the existing
> in-memory implementation and I think that this package has strengths that
> make it ideally suited for building an editing environment.
>
> As a new project team, we don't really have a "process" for introducing new
> packages into the project. Perhaps at some stage in the future we should
> formalise the process...however, right now I am interested in hearing what
> the views of the other members of this list are. The main question is "Does
> this sound like something that should be a part of TM4J ?"...the second
> question is "Is it something that you feel you could / would help out with
> ?"

Seems an interesting approach to me and it has to be evaluated in a real 
application. So, we should give it a try. 

A technical issue: How do you map the graph structure into a tree ? E.g.
if I want the type of an association, which referenced by an ID in XTM, do
you start than an XPath query ?

Best Regards,
Gerd