[Tm4j-developers] Re: Graph presentation

[Murray A. <m.a...@op...>]

Sam Hunting wrote:

>>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).


The objectives seem very similar to what Steve and Michel provided
with TMPM4, ie., a graph representation of a topic map. When they
provided that graph DTD it set me off looking for a graph DTD designed
more generically, and GXL seems to fit that bill so far as I can see.
Once a TM is in memory it seems more natural to serialize it to something
that others can read. The community of worker bees around GXL are moving
toward having a schema language ready, one expressed not in some other
language (such as DTDs or RDF schema, the latter using a different
namespace and grammar) but in GXL itself.


>>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.


Well, my project so far reads XTM, Cyc (to some extent), ITIS, and LTM.
Same approach as you I believe...

 
>>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." 


I think keeping the lexical/grammatical layer somewhat generic is
a good thing. This doesn't mean that specific syntaxes aren't a
good way of expressing complex structures, as for example a GXL
representation of a topic map would have the same liabilities as
Steve and Michel's graph DTD (verbosity, difficulty to read and
edit, etc.) but all the advantages and more.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                         <mailto:m.altheim @ open.ac.uk>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

      In the evening
      The rice leaves in the garden
      Rustle in the autumn wind
      That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu