Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on xtm http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic xtm Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Bringing topics to RSS Sun, 30 Jun 2002 10:10:55 +0100 <A href="http://www.iaslash.org/node.php?id=4523">Bringing metadata back into RSS with subject taxonomies</A>. I hope to be able to spend time experimenting with XML again after a few projects I'm working on settle down. First on my plate will be to read more about how to bring <A href="http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/05/02/semanticwebsite.html">subject-headings/topics into RSS</A>. Specifically, I think <A href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/index.html">XTM for Topic Maps</A>, the <A href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-dev/files/Modules/Proposed/mod_taxonomy.html">RSS taxonomy and Dublin Core modules</A>, and Peter's <A href="http://xfml.org/">XFML</A> are where I am going to be spending my time at first. [<A href="http://www.iaslash.org/">ia/ - news for information architects</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Serendipity! I'm also interested in how to add topic-based metadata to RSS feeds.  I'd come across XTM a while back but not had an immediate use for it.  Time to start reading I guess.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000065.html The Tao of Topic Maps Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:30:08 +0100 <A href="http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html">The TAO of Topic Maps</A>. <A href="http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html">The <ACRONYM title="Topics, Associations, and Occurrences">TAO</ACRONYM> of Topic Maps</A> introduces <A href="http://www.topicmaps.org/">topic maps</A>, a new <A class=acronym title="International Organization for Standardisationclick to visit the ISO web site" href="http://www.iso.ch/">ISO</A> standard for describing knowledge structures and associating them with information resources. [<A href="http://home.netcom.com/~luskr/weblog/radio/categories/kLogs/">Ron Lusk: Ron's K-Logs</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Wow cool.  More reading for tomorrow!  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000168.html TAO of topic maps Mon, 15 Jul 2002 21:52:39 +0100 <A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/000090.html">The TAO of Topic Maps</A>. Steve Pepper has written a succinct introduction to topic maps, titled The TAO of Topic Maps. To quote Steve: Topic [<A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/">Column Two</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I finally got a chance to read this paper on the tube going to London today.  A key paragraph that leapt out at me was: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "But knowledge is fundamentally different from information: the difference is that between knowing a thing versus simply having information about it.  And if, as one writer claims, 'knowledge management covers three main knowledge activities: generation, codification, and transfer', then topic maps can be regarded as the standard for codification that is the necessary prerequisite for the development of tools that assist in the generation and transfer of knowledge."</BLOCKQUOTE> In general the topic maps approach seems very sound to me with very laudible goals.  It also dovetails nicely with a lot of my liveTopics efforts and lends some new and credible directions. For example I have already implemented code in the liveTopics plugin to export the topical references in the weblog as an XTM topic map.   Additionally my idea for topic themes seems almost identical to the concept of themes in the document. It also highlights some things I should address.  The idea of synonyms and homynyms are clearly important once people start sharing their topics (via topicRolls).  It may also be useful to allow people to define their own glossaries (maybe integrated with the existing Radio glossary).  And in order to generate occurrence data the permalinks of each posting should be used as topic references to that posting. All in all a useful guide to the capabilities of topic maps.  What is required now is another work building upon this that details some of the applications that topic maps will enable.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000202.html Web Ontology Thu, 08 Aug 2002 22:55:13 +0100 <A href="http://www.iaslash.org/node.php?id=4576">OWL Web Ontology Language Working Drafts Published</A>. From W3C news releases: The Web Ontology Working Group has released three first Working Drafts. The <A href="http://w3.org/TR/2002/WD-owl-features-20020729/">Feature Synopsis</A>, <A href="http://w3.org//TR/2002/WD-owl-absyn-20020729/">Abstract Syntax</A> and <A href="http://w3.org//TR/2002/WD-owl-ref-20020729/">Language Reference</A> describe the OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 and its subset OWL Lite. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. OWL is used to publish and share ontologies on the Web. Read about the W3C <A href="http://w3.org//2001/sw/">Semantic Web Activity</A>. [<A href="http://www.iaslash.org/">ia/ - news for information architects</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Interesting stuff.  I shall have to see how this relates to Topic Mapping and XTM.  My guess is that OWL is a layer above XTM and is used for providing the contours of the topic map.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000271.html First book on XTM topic maps? Sat, 10 Aug 2002 23:46:25 +0100 <A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/000141.html">New book on topic maps</A>. Addison-Wesley Professional has just released a new book titled XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web... [<A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/">Column Two</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Looks good.  Some more info: <UL> <LI>Knowledge bases can be designed that not only relate concepts together but also can point to the resources relevant to each concept."</LI> <LI>Beginning with a broad introduction and tutorial of topic maps and XTM technology, the book then lays out strategies for creating and deploying the technology.</LI> <LI>Along the way the latest theoretical perspectives are offered along with a discussion of the challenges developers will face as the Web continues to evolve and develop.</LI> <LI>"The topic maps paradigm enables Global Federated Knowledge Interchange -- a concept that should be important to you if you are a large information owner with diversely structured information assets and international reach."</LI></UL> And I said I wouldn't buy any more books....</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000303.html XTM export of a weblog Mon, 26 Aug 2002 21:25:56 +0100 Anyone with an interest in XTM want to check <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/outlines/topics/topics.xtm">this</A> out? It's my weblog + topics exported as a topic map via liveTopics.  I'd be interested in any opinions as to the correctness of my XTM implementation, use of tags etc...   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000461.html Klogs can improve the value of what you write Wed, 28 Aug 2002 15:27:46 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/">Curiouser and curiouser!</A> in <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/08/27.html#a339">There's a hole in my bucket...</A>. <BLOCKQUOTE>As a klogger, over the past 3 months or so, I have recorded & published tens if not hundreds of thoughts.  I doubt if I shared one quarter of output during the last 6 years I worked at various companies.  Oh I would probably have emailed here and there, spoken up during meetings.  But I wonder just how much knowledge is being lost, second by second, in most companies by each employee.  Then multiply up...</BLOCKQUOTE> But even if they would catch those thoughts, it's going to be very difficult to find something relevant and to understand it our of the context. More or less like forum discussion: you have to follow for some time to make sense of it. Going through blog archives is not easy... So far I benefit more from the distributed dialog and from the collective filtering. So, blogs is more for sharing, rather than capturing... [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0109961/">Mathemagenic</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I don't think this problem is necessarily inherent in blogging/klogging as practiced, more a problem in the simple calendar based access method most weblogs provide by default. But there are other options, for example a Radio weblog with liveTopics adds another dimension for relating posts together to create a train of thought.  You can follow a topic from a post into a table of contents where you can see other posts referencing that topic.  You can also see, for each post, other topics that were associated with it allowing you to hop from one subject of conversation to another. The next level is based upon XML topic maps (in XTM format) which I am experimenting with generating right now.  This will allow you to reconstruct the weblog to serve different purposes and, by merging topic maps from different weblogs together, to analyse a larger conversational "space." All in all I think klogs will, ultimately, vastly improve the ability for people to find things that are relevant and meaningful among the discourse of themselves and others.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000472.html XFML and the weblog Sat, 05 Oct 2002 10:38:06 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/10/04.html#a393">An overview of faceted classification</A>. Peter over at <A href="http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/">Ease</A> provides a short overview of what's happening now in <A href="http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/000481.html">faceted classification</A>. Worth looking at if you're interested in metadata and taxonomies. Peter writes: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> tool availability is coming, and that's good because that will allow us to experiment and then refine the theory.</BLOCKQUOTE> This is precisely how I think it should happen. It's a bootstrap process. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » The forthcoming 1.0.5 release of liveTopics will have a built in XFML exporter.  However, in a sense, this is nothing more than the simple XTM exporter already present (although somewhat buried). To see a sample of the XFML from a liveTopics enabled weblog take a look <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/outlines/topics/xfml-map.xml">here</A>.  As you will see we have only one XFML facet generic defined to which all of the topics belong. In considering my own ideas for theme support in liveTopics I think they can be mapped to XFML 'parent topics' and so we won't really be using XFML facets at all. This then begs the question:  Of what use is XFML faceted classifaction in a weblog?</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000649.html XTM and XFML: more cousins than competitors Tue, 08 Oct 2002 22:34:19 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/10/08.html#a420">A faceted classification standard</A>. <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/10/08.html#a464">XFML 1.0 (CORE) Published today</A>. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/">Curiouser and curiouser!</A>] Does this have the same purpose as XTM (topic maps)? What are the differences? [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Whilst XTM and XFML do have many similarities (and theoretically you could represent any XFML document using XTM -- I think) they are different. XTM was designed to be a generalized format for representing arbitrary topic relationships. The upshot is that XTM, whilst expressive, is relatively complicated.  XFML is more focused and so, IMO, easier to get going with.  XTM can support arbitrary, complex, relationships among topics.  XFML supports fewer simpler relationships.  Don't go getting the idea that XFML is inferior though. One of XFML's guiding principles is that it be focused and easy to implement.  In this I think it succeeds admirably.  The spec is only about 8 or 9 pages long. In an XTM document everything is a topic or relationship.  This means you can model arbitrary structures, but this very power makes XTM quite complex and an individual XTM document is not necessarily easy to understand. By contrast XFML defines just three structures: <UL> <LI>topics (can belong to a single facet)</LI> <LI>facets (can group many topics)</LI> <LI>pages (can have topics as occurrences)</LI></UL> For most web-based applications these three concepts are sufficiently expressive.  Topics can have a parent (but only 1, which must be within the same facet).  A facet thereby is a hierarchy of topics.  So an XFML document contains a number of topic hierarchies which each define a seperable metadata concept. To understand this idea imagine you define topics under the facet Date of Publication like: 1999 2000   Jan 2000     1 Jan 2000     2 Jan 2000     ...   Feb 2000     ...   ... ... Each page in the XFML document will have an occurence of a topic like "1 Jan 2000" indicating its date of publication. Another facet could be Author with topics like: InfoWorld   Jon Udel   Bob Lewis Novissio   Matt Mower and again each page in the XFML document will have an occurrence of the appropriate author topic. The first thing to notice is that it probably doesn't make sense for a topic from the Author facet to appear in the Date of Publication facet (and vice-verca)  They really are orthogonal concepts. The other thing is that because the topics are hierarchical we can start off with a general filter and drill down.  These two facets would allow you to immediately restrict the range of pages you were looking at to: <UL> <LI>only those published by InfoWorld (or Novissio)</LI> <LI>only those published in a specific year</LI></UL> Drilling down further into either facet will filter to an even narrower (more focussed) set of results.  This is a very powerful tool if you have the right facets and appropriately defined topic hierarchies (for your application). For a much clearer and more succint definition read  <A href="http://www.highcontext.com/">David Gammel's</A> recent post to the xfml group <A href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xfml/message/145">here</A>. The other powerful concept embodied directly in XFML is the idea of connecting topics together.  This allows me to say, within my map, that: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> my topic X = your topic Y</BLOCKQUOTE> Which is a very powerful, decentralised, way of sharing your indexing efforts without requiring that everyone use the same topics/terminology.  For building real-world topic maps among groups of disconnected people (such as those in different organisations) this could be essential. Okay I've about run out of steam for the moment.  Hopefully this was useful though.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000686.html Topic Maps: CMS is only the beginning Thu, 21 Nov 2002 09:59:41 +0000 <A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/000381.html">Topic maps in content management</A>. Lars Marius Garshol recently e-mailed me, and pointed me his very interesting article on topic maps and content management. This talks about using an Integrated Topic Management System (ITMS) to provide a much more powerful management interface to the normal... [<A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/">Column Two</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I'm fundamentally a believer in topic maps even though I haven't really seen them in concrete action yet.  I just believe that they are too simple and elegant an idea to not work.  The nice thing is that with XTM and XFML beginning to take off we are sure to see more and more applications that do support topic maps. One thing in particular that interests me is that Alex Shapiro (of TouchGraph fame) has created a Personal Brain viewer.  This uses the new brain exporter to create a map that is browsable in a TouchGraph viewer.  It's very cool to be able to take the plex-style view of Personal Brain and switch to a TG style view.  If only they could be integrated somehow... For my own part liveTopics adds to the capability of Radio as a CMS by overlaying a topic based structure onto the content.  This will become more powerful when topics can themselves be structured, and when the postings from multiple weblogs can be related by content. Something that worries me though is a recent comment (I cannot remember the source) that weblogs+topics are just recreating threaded discussions.  I can't quite articulate yet what it is I don't like about this comment, but there is something here that bothers me.  (Note: I see nothing wrong with threaded discussion per-se, I think I am more bothered by the possible perception that blogs = another usenet somehow)</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000846.html Socialising with the SocialText crew Tue, 25 Feb 2003 20:28:11 +0000 Good conference call today between <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/">Ross</A> and <A href="http://alevin.com/weblog/">Adina</A> of <A href="http://www.socialtext.com/">SocialText</A> and <A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</A> and I.  We all shared of our vision and our plans for the future which seem to be quite complementary.  It's good to talk to other people doing interesting things in this space and I hope that we get an opportunity to work together.  Certainly we both believe in the importance of supporting standards which, for us, means a big focus on <A href="http://backend.userland.com/rss">RSS2.0</A> and <A href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/">XTM</A>. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001210.html Exploring topics in RSS2.0 Sat, 05 Apr 2003 10:38:33 +0100 I've been doing some thinking about how to encode topic information into RSS2.0 feeds.  As a simple test of the Radio callback facility I have <A href="http://matt.blogs.it/rss.xml">implemented</A> a very simplistic protocol.  Within each <item> is a tag <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <topic id="topic_id" type="topic-type" source="url">topic name</topic></BLOCKQUOTE> for each topic associated with the item (post).  A concrete example (using the rsstopics namespace): <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <rsstopics:topic rsstopics:id="the_state" rsstopics:source="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/topicsT.html#the_state" rsstopics:type="generic">the state</rsstopics:topic></BLOCKQUOTE> Whilst this does have the advantage that it's simple and direct it's also a bit silly to invent a new format for topic information when we have two standard culprits available already: <UL dir=ltr> <LI> <DIV><A href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/">Resource Description Framework (RDF)</A> </DIV> <LI> <DIV><A href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/">XML Topic Maps (XTM)</A></DIV></LI></UL> RDF is a general format for describing resources.  A resource in RDF terms is anything which can be uniquely identified by a URI.  An RDF statement (utilizing <A href="http://dublincore.org/">Dublin Core</A> metadata) that asserts me as the owner of my weblog might look something like: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://matt.blogs.it">     <dc:Creator>Matt Mower</dc:Creator> </rdf:Description></BLOCKQUOTE> If you cut away the syntactic fluff what this says is: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Matt Mower is the Creator of <A href="http://matt.blogs.it/">http://matt.blogs.it</A></BLOCKQUOTE> Referring back to the problem at hand, describing what a post (expressed as an RSS item) is about we could come up with something like: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <item rdf:about="permalink">     <topic id="topic_id" type="topic-type" source="url">topic name</topic> </item></BLOCKQUOTE> Which is more or less exactly where we started -- using RDF hasn't altered the solution but it has added some framework around it (in this case adding rdf:about to signal the presence of RDF data within the item).  However we can go a step further.  A useful <A href="http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/05/02/semanticwebsite.html">article</A> by <A href="http://www.xml.com/pub/au/74">Eric van der Vlist</A> discusses this very subject and refers to the RSS1.0 taxonomy module. Somewhat counter to what you would expect <A href="http://backend.userland.com/rss">RSS2.0</A> does not follow on from <A href="http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/">RSS1.0</A>, nor does RSS1.0 follow on from the popular RSS0.9x formats.  RSS1.0 is, depending upon your point of view, a step forward or an aberation.  RSS1.0 uses a modular set of RDF based tags to describe items in the RSS feed.  One such module is the <A href="http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/">Taxonomy module</A> which is intended to allow classification of RSS channels & items. Using the taxonomy module you create something like: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <item rdf:about="permalink">     <taxo:topics>         <rdf:Bag>             <rdf:li resource="topic-uri-1"/>             <rdf:li resource="topic-uri-2"/>         </rdf:Bag>     </taxo:topics> </item></BLOCKQUOTE> Here the <topics> element contains a list (using the RDF defined Bag - or unorderer list - container element) of resources indicating topics that describe the item.  Each resource then has a <topic> element that describes the topic.  It  might look something like: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <taxo:topic rdf:about="http://matt.blogs.it/topics/topicsT.html#the_state">     <taxo:link>http://matt.blogs.it/topics/topicsT.html#the_state<taxo:link>     <rsstopics:type>generic</rsstopics:type>     <dc:title>The State</dc:title> </taxo:topic></BLOCKQUOTE> Although it's a jumble of RDF, the RSS1.0 taxonomy module, Dublic Core, and, a custom rsstopics schema this says exactly the same thing as the original: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <topic id="topic_id" type="topic-type" source="url">topic name</topic></BLOCKQUOTE> But do we have to deal with such an ugly mess?  Perhaps not.  Our original choices included the XML Topic Maps format.  This is a complete specification for exchanging topic information.  An example of a topic in XTM format might look something like: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <topic id="the_state">     <instanceOf>         <topicRef xlink:href="http://www.purl.org/rss-topics/rss-topics#generic">     </instanceOf>     <baseName>         <baseNameString>The State</baseNameString>     <occurence id="the-state-item">         <instanceOf>             <topicRef xlink:href="http://www.purl.org/rss-topics/rss-topics#story">         </instanceOf>         <resourceRef xlink:href="<permalink-uri>">     </occurence> </topic></BLOCKQUOTE> Again this encodes the same information, using a standard format and only one required namespace (that of XTM itself).  A URI such as <A href="http://www.purl.org/rss-topics/rss-topics#generic">http://www.purl.org/rss-topics/rss-topics#generic</A> points at a topic in another map (in this case a topic describing the topic-type generic). The use of XTM comes with a number of advantages with the main one being that there are an increasing number of tools available to process & manipulate it (for example, see <A href="http://www.topicmap.com/topicmap/tools.html">topicmap.com</A>).  However there also a number of problems with this representation when you attempt to embed it within another XML format such as RSS. <UL dir=ltr> <LI> <DIV>It's not clear whether an XTM fragment such as this is valid when used in this way</DIV> <LI> <DIV>Each time a topic is used we will be duplicating it's details, bloating the markup & potentially creating invalid entries</DIV> <LI> <DIV>The <occurence> relation within the <topic> element is technically redundant.  The enclosing <item> indicates the occurrence.  </DIV></LI></UL> One way to avoid these problems would be to embed the topics within the RSS <channel> definition and refer to them from each <item>.  However we still need a way to refer to the topic and XTM doesn't provide this.  If we had a good way to reference topics then we could either embed mini topic map within the RSS file, or just have the <topicmap> in an external file and point to it.  What could we use?  One possibility is RDF. Using a combination of RDF and XTM would mean something like: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <item rdf:about="<permalink-uri>">     <rsstopics:topic>http://www.example.org/myTopicMap.xtm#topic-id</rsstopics:topic>     </item></BLOCKQUOTE> or <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <item rdf:about="<permalink-uri>">     <rsstopics:topic>#topic-id</rsstopics:topic>   </item></BLOCKQUOTE> In this example the item now refers to an XTM defined topic either elsewhere in the RSS feed (contained within a valid <topicmap> element) or within an external topic map.  The referenced <topic> element can further describe the topic (names, types and so on) using all the expressiveness of XTM.  It's also efficient since there is no duplicated information within the feed. I have described approaches using RDF, XTM and a hybrid of the two.  Each has advantages and disadvantages although I believe the hybrid makes the best use of both formats. I'd welcome comments and or opinions from interested parties. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001357.html