AsTMa= Authoring Tutorial

v1.2, 2004-11-02

1 Introduction

A Topic Map consists of topics and relationships (associations) between these topics. The topics provide a vocabulary, i.e. a set of terms useful for a particular problem area. Topics can have various names, but also can contain references to resources outside the map (mostly URLs). In this respect, topics are very similar to browser bookmarks, only slightly more general in the sense that there is no need to organize the topics into a strict concept hierarchy. Any topic can have arbitrarily many such references.

More useful, though, is to combine (associate) topics. These associations connect the isolated topics and form the basis of a network of knowledge. We will see in further articles what kind of knowledge we can store in a Topic Map.

In the following we will use a running example to create a simple Topic Map document. Our knowledge domain deals with the OSI (Open System Interconnection) model which is popular among network engineers. There is no need that you fully understand the model. We will only use that the model consists of various building blocks (layers) which are stacked atop of each other, every layer being responsible for a particular role in a computer-computer communication.

Copyright © 2002 Robert Barta

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