xml-dev - Topic Maps and AF

[David Wang <dwang@mitre.org>]

Ok... I'm finding the following statements *a little* contradictory.

Topic Maps, as I understood the ISO/IEC 13250 standard to say, is a
particular usage of Architecture Forms.  It seems no different than,
say, how Architecture Forms are just a particular usage of DTDs.  The
specification seems completely encouched in AF.

Steven R. Newcomb said:
>The Topic Maps spec, which seems to be newsworthy these days, is an
>inheritable architecture. It's good that XLink has turned out to be
>a set of architectural forms, because XML Topic Maps (among many
>other applications) must inherit the extended XLink syntax and
>semantics.

So... something doesn't jive - Topic Maps inherit from both XLink syntax
and encouched in AF?  Perhaps I'm missing some pieces here (I'm hoping!
:-) ).

- Is there an "XML-ified" version/spec of Topic Maps, and if so, where
can I find it?
- If not, it seems odd that Topic maps, being newsworthy, needs and
rides on top of AF, which seems to not be newsworthy (depending on
viewpoints, but let's speculate for the moment).  Any reasons?

I'm liking what Topic Map brings to the table in terms of drawing
relations between topics, so if there is any work going on this area,
I'd love a pointer, too.

Thanks very much,
/David


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