A Topic Maps to Topic Maps Converter
August 12th, 2010
Some days ago Lars Heuer released an online topic maps to topic maps converter. It is a very useful service: you provide the URL of a topic maps source plus the required syntax and you will get back the converted map. For example, the following link converts a Tom Waits topic map from LTM to CTM.
http://ws.mappify.org/tm2tm/?tm=http://mappify.googlecode.com/svn/sandbox/tm2tm/waits.ltm&out=ctm
The service supports xtm, ctm, json, and jtm export. (It seems that ctm input is not supported at the moment.)
A similar service is provided by Maiana. In Maiana you can upload maps in xtm, ctm, json, or jtm. Each map you have in Maiana can be downloaded – which means converted – in several other formats. Currently Maiana supports xtm 1.0, xtm 2.0, xtm 2.1, jtm, ltm, tmxml, and ctm as export formats. Besides this you can download the linked data set for each topic in a topic map, like this Giacomo Puccini linked data set. The opera topic map in Maiana is a good starting point for playing around with different topic maps formats. Hence, Maiana is a topic maps to topic maps converter for all who need or want a user interface.
Standardization is great! Maiana and the mappify converter mostly play smoothly together. The waits from the converter map in Maiana is a new topic map which directly uses
http://ws.mappify.org/tm2tm/?tm=http://mappify.googlecode.com/svn/sandbox/tm2tm/waits.ltm&out=ctm
as input. The other way round, the mappify converter converts the XTM (2.1) download from this map into ctm, which is provided by the following URL:
Having online converters for topic maps in the web will help to solve the syntaxes puzzle we currently have.
UPDATE August 13, 2010: Thanks to a request by Robert Cerny from the Topincs Project – and tutor of the NoCode Camp at TMRA 2010 – a simple web form was added to upload maps for conversion.
How to get a new Maiana account?
March 10th, 2010
Getting a new Maiana account is straight forward. Naturally, you can use Maiana without any account. In this case you can explore all public maps and parts of the users profiles.
Why do I need a Maiana account?
Whit an account Maiana becomes much more powerful. First of all you can upload new maps.The most important feature is privacy: each new map you create in Maiana is private and only you can explore this map. You as owner can invite other users to this map, or you can set it public. Following users, watching maps or commenting pages – all these and much more features require a Maiana account. With an account Maiana changes from a simple topic maps explorer to a powerful tool for collaborative sharing, exploration and usage of maps.
Getting the Maiana account
If you are not logged the link “Sign up” is always provided to you in the header. Following this link you enter the registration page of Maiana.
- In the first step you have to decide about your username (login). This username will become part of the URLs of all maps you manage in Maiana. In example the map http://maiana.topicmapslab.de/u/marie/tm/memap is from the user marie.
- In the second field you have to enter a valid email address. Generally, please use a valid address because Maiana will send an activation link to this account. (See below the benefits of an address which is registered at Gravatar.)
- In the last two fields you have to enter and confirm your password.
- To avoid spam registrations Maiana ask the users to pass a captcha.
When you press “register” the information you provided are validated. In the case you chose a already existing account name, a already used email address or your password was not confirmed correctly you will get a request to fix it.
Immediately after your data has passed the validation you will receive an email with an activation link. Please click on this link to complete the registration. Welcome in Maiana!
You profile image from Gravatar
In Maiana each user profile have a small image from the users (a so called avatar). Maiana do not handle these images themselves but uses gravatar as provider. Gravatar is a free service which helps you to publish one unique avatar at any place in the web. You simply have to upload your image and register it with the email you already use for your Maiana account.
In Topic Maps Subject Identifiers are used to identify the subject of topics. These subject identifiers are something like global ids for the things you make statements about in your topic maps. Whenever two topics within one map share the same subject identifier they have to be merged to become the unique information hub for their subject. Consequently, for global knowledge federation subject identifiers should be shared globally. The more authors of topic maps share the same identifiers the closer we come to the goal of globally linkable data.
In 2009 subj3ct.com (a service by networkedplanet) has been established as a repository for PSIs. Content providers submit the identifiers they have created, augmented with more information.
Subject Identifiers in Maiana
In Maiana, the social topic maps explorer from the Topic Maps Lab, all knowledge about your subject identifiers from the subj3ct.com registry is automatically provided to you. Let’s have a look at Kal Ahemds (one of the guys behind subj3ct.com) topic site in the TMRA 2009 participants map.
In the original TMRA 2009 participant map the map author Uta has added one subject identifier (http://www.topicmapslab.de/people/Kal_Ahmed) to the topic for Kal.
Whenever a new record for a person is created in topicmapslab.de all subject identifiers are submitted to subj3ct.com automatically. Consequently, thanks to Kal’s profile at topicmapslab.de the PSI used by Uta is available in the global identifier repository.
Maiana and subj3ct.com: how it works
Whenever you open a topic page in Maiana all PSIs of the current topic are checked against subj3ct.com. If an identifier is already registered in subj3ct.com a small icon is displayed (1). By clicking on this icon you will come to the site of this PSI in subj3ct.com (2). PSIs having this icon tend to be more established, widespread and re-usable than the others.
The subj3ct.com registry does not only contain the PSIs, but also all identifiers which are declared as synonyms. Maiana displays all these equivalent identifiers in the bottom of the original PSI in the map (3). For the Kal topic you can learn that someone has declared the identifier http://psi.ontopedia.net/Kal_Ahmed as equivalent to the identifier from topicmapslab.de.
Remark: In Maiana these equivalent identifiers are only displayed, they do not affect any merging nor do they become part of the map you browse.)
Get more links from subj3ct.com: the representations
Besides the features you have already seen subj3ct.com provides you further information about the registered PSIs: the representations. They are similar to external occurrences – links where you find more information about the identified subject.
But as you can see in the blue box there are no representations for Kal’s identifier available in subj3ct.com. So we better switch to the topic for Kal in the Topic Maps Tools map.
As you can see above, in this map the PSI http://psi.ontopedia.net/Kal_Ahmed is used as subject identifier for Kal. For this identifier two representations are stored in subj3ct.com which are displayed in the blue box. Following these links you will get some photos from Kal at various conferences.
Summary
The subj3ct.com integration in Maiana is seamless – you don’t have to do anything to get the full knowledge about the PSIs used in the currently browsed topic page. For each subject identifier Maiana automatically requests the subj3ct.com service for existence, equivalent identifiers and further representations. You simply can use these information for you convenience.
