[Tm4j-developers] Re: Graph presentation

[Sam H. <sam...@ya...>]

> One wonders if the persistence layer of any knowledge product ought
> not to  consist of something a bit more "universal" (whatever that 
> means) than XTM.  GXL comes to mind, and Murray Altheim seems to be
> heading in that direction. 

Elaine Svenonius says that "objectives determine ontology" (and not the
other way round). So I am not clear on what the objectives are here. I
can see "universal" meaning "closer to the data struture" (more
nodes-and-arcs-ish) or "closer to the knowledge interchanged" (more
subject-and-association-ish).

> It may be that the GooseWorks package is
> going in that direction as well, but I'm not sure yet.

We are focusing more on making the topic map paradigm "omnivorous with
respect to markup." We want to eat everything... So far, we only
excrete XTM, though that could change depending on what people's needs
are, or what people volunteer to do.

> Your thoughts on the notion of going in the direction of a universal,
> graph-theoretic backside with wrapper/mappers?

That is very close to the direction GW is headed in -- whatever
"universal" might mean. (I don't think there is anything universal, at
least that we can have knowledge of. There are only agreements and
agreements to agree....) 

It's also very close to the ISO submission of the "road map." 

S.


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