topicmap.com

Johannes Schmidt has just updated QuaaxTM core which now implements PHPTMAPI 2.0. The SVN is now available including a test suite.

Lars Marius Garshol has announced the availability of the Ontopia source code!

We have now started loading the Ontopia source code into Subversion over at the Ontopia Google Code project. So far, what we have is the Java source code for the product plus the tests. We also have a guide to building the code.

NetworkedPlanet have released, Subj3ct, a new web service for resolving subject identity.

Subj3ct is a Subject Identity Resolution Service, it provides both a portal for humans to use and an API for developers and applications. We store subject identifiers, equivalent identifiers and also links to web resources that contain structured or unstructured information about a subject.

Robert Cerny has announced that JSON Topic Maps 1.0 is now final.

JTM is a Topic Maps notation that is particular useful in a  JavaScript environment (e.g. Browser). It is meant for machine  exchange of topic maps, not for authoring.  It is based on the TMDM  and stands next to XTM 2.0 on the shelf of notations.

The TMRA 2009 website is now up and running.

TMRA 2009 will be the fifth event in the annual series of international conferences on Topic Maps Research and Applications. TMRA is the advanced scientific and industrial forum whose main object is connecting the key players in the Topic Maps community. Here you will find researchers and users in government and industry, as well as the vendors, the luminaries, and the standards creators gathered for an exchange of ideas in a stimulating setting.

Bouvet has announced that the will be open sourcing Ontopia’s OKS. This is great news for the Topic Maps world as it will allow a lot more developers get their hands on the OKS, probably the most mature and featured Topic Maps engine currently available.

Bouvet is a consulting company focusing on the Nordic market, and so selling a software product internationally has proved to be difficult to accommodate within the organization. Bouvet wants to continue to develop the OKS and to sell services based on the product. In our opinion the best way to do that, and to ensure that existing customers are satisfied, is to turn the OKS into an open source project, which we will call Ontopia.

There are still many decisions left to be made, and while we do have ideas for how to administer and license the software, we wish to invite other interested parties to give us their input, to help ensure that the Ontopia project is interesting for as many parties as possible. For this reason we will host a planning meeting on May 26th in Oslo. The intention is that this will enable an active community to develop around the project. It will also help ensure that existing customers have their needs met.

Bouvet will honor all support and maintenance contracts currently in effect, and we aim to continue selling such contracts. However, the specific terms of the new contracts will need to change to some degree as the project goes open source. More information on this will follow after the planning meeting.

We aim to achieve the following by 2010:

• Having an active community around the Ontopia project, consisting of developers, users, and discussions on the project web site
• That Ontopia is used in even more projects (whether run by Bouvet or not)
• Having a licensing and administration model which makes it attractive for other parties to use and contribute to Ontopia
• Having an offer of professional support on the product to both Bouvet customers and others

Plan:

• April-May: Bouvet to prepare the source code and project web site
• May 26th: Planning Meeting (consolidating meeting) where Bouvet meets interested parties to discuss how to achieve the best possible administration of the project. We will discuss issues like licensing, project administration, funding, etc. Suggestions and participation highly welcome!
• July 1st: Project is launched; source code is made available
• Q3/Q4: Code Camps where the community works on the software to fix bugs and add new requested features
• Q4: Ontopia under active development

More information: http://www.ontopia.net/faq.html

NetworkedPlanet now have a new “NetworkedPlanet Web 3″ blog discussing their take on Web 3 and Topic Maps. The first few posts have been based on the concept of a Subject Identity Resolution Service and the subsequent subj3ct.com website.

Lars Marius Garshol has published a topic map tools topic map. You can slice and dice by vendor, platform, technology etc.

Marcel Hoyer announced the creation of the sharptm project at Google Code.

To introduce the Topic Maps technology to the .NET world, the goal of this project is a small and extensible Topic Maps engine based on the TMAPI.Net project that implements the TMAPI 2.0 interfaces and unit test.

Another objective is compatibility with a wide range of plattforms like .NET 2.0+, Mono, .NET Compact Framework and Silverlight. That’s why the resulting engine should be small and lightweight.

Lutz Maicher has announced the TMRA 2008 program.

A bunch of exciting submissions allowed us to put together a very interesting program for the two conference days. The topics of the talks within the two parallel tracks cover a wide range form very technical aspects to applications. Besides this, the open space sessions will give us an idea of the papers which will be presented at the next years conferences.

Many papers have PDFs so you can read the full content of the papers.

Yorgos has announced the availability of FreeTM, a web-based simple Topic Maps editor.

FreeTM is a Free Topic Map Editor, based on GWTM (Topic Maps for GWT) library, that uses tinyTIM library for handling and storing Topic Maps on the server.
FreeTM is developed by the Departments of Electronics, TEI Thessalonikis, Greece and it is free to be used for Topic Maps editing.

Lars Marius Garshol has updated the GTM homepage with 3 recent presentations.

Lars Marius Garshol announced that “We now finally have a release of the first version of the CXTM-based test suite for Topic Maps engines. It consists of 293 tests using four different syntaxes: XTM 2.0, CTM, LTM 1.3, and TM/XML. The tests have been verified using two different Topic Maps engines (OKS and tinyTIM), and should be reasonably reliable even at this early stage.”

Robert Barta has added XTM support to Perl TM now at version 1.41.

During the last days I have added – without much enthusiasm, mind you – XTM support, for versions 1.0, 2.0 (and the intermediate 1.1). Especially 1.0 is cumbersome programming. Let’s thank the XTM editors for the much simpler version 2. Support means deserialization and serialization, so you should be able to create valid XML instances in all the above flavors.

Inge Henriksen announced the release of his open source C++ Topic Maps engine. It has bindings for lots of scripting languages:

My first main goal with this new engine was to enable C++ programmers (the same programming language in which TM++ is written) to be able to use topic maps in their programs. The second goal was to make a really fast topic maps engine without having to fall back on caching and the likes. The engine is based around TMDM 1.0, and you can also work with XTM 1.0 and XTM 2.0 files.

Steve Pepper has a blog about Topic Maps and related things:

I shall be using this blog to talk about the things that matter to me, the things I believe in, and to criticize the things I think need criticizing.

CXTM has a new home.

Inge Henriksen has a new blog, Meronymy, dealing with Topic Map issues.

Robert Cerny announced a Topincs Store about Topic Maps.

This  repository aims to support newcomers as well as long time community members to gain a concise picture of this community and its efforts and  to help them find information about Topic Maps.

The programme for the Topic Maps users Conference in Oslo has been announced. The conference is being held in Oslo between 2-4 April 2008 and the theme is “Towards the Vision of Subject-Centric Computing”.

Giuliano Vivanet announced the first website dedicated to Topic Maps in Italian.

In fact, there are not many italian resources about this standard. Thus, TMXTM.it is intended to introduce italian users to the Topic Maps paradigm. It will provide an introduction (not too technical because I come from a pedagogical background!!!) to the ISO 13250 standard, especially the Data Model, its history and key elements, and a guide to the web resources available (weblinks, tutorials, examples, conferences, ecc.)

Salvatore Vassallo has written a draft of an Italian translation of the Topic Maps Glossary.

The Wandora project have converted the Gene Ontology (public domain) into a Topic Map.

There’s a new Topic Maps blog providing “news and links from the world of Topic Maps“. It is written by the topic mappers at Bouvet (Ontopia) and appears to be very current and relevant.

Steve Pepper announced that AToMS 2007 is to be held in Kyoto on December 12th, 2007.

Do you live in East or South-East Asia, especially Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, or the Philippines? If so, I urge you to attend AToMS 2007 in Kyoto on December 12th. It will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about Topic Maps and to network with Asian users and international experts.

PS. Slides of talks are avilable on the site.