TM::Serializable::LTM(3pm)				User Contributed Perl Documentation				TM::Serializable::LTM(3pm)

NAME

       TM::Serializable::LTM - Topic Maps, trait for parsing of LTM instances.

SYNOPSIS

	 # this is not an end-user package
	 # see the source of TM::Materialized::LTM

DESCRIPTION

       This package provides parsing functionality for LTM 1.3 instances with the exceptions listed below. LTM 1.3 is backwards compatible with
       version 1.2.  As LTM 1.3 is not yet public, please contact the author (Lars M. Garshol) for a copy.
	  http://www.ontopia.net/download/ltm.html

   Deviations from the LTM Specification
       comments:
	   The parser does NOT recognizes nested comments. Any closest following */ sequence terminates a comment. The parser does also not
	   distinguish between comments within or outside strings.

	   Justification: Speed of parsing and complexity of the parser.

       scope:
	   Only exactly ONE topic can be specified for a scope.

	   Justification: Multiple topics per scope are allowed by the standard, but are undefined in their semantics. The underlying TM
	   representation does NOT allow for multiple topics per scope.

       variants
	   Variants are currently not supported. This also includes sort names and display names.

	   Justification: Will be added later.

       syntax
	   Any number of statements are allowed in LTM files (also 0).

	   Justification: There is no reason to do otherwise.

       TOPICMAP directive
	   This is currently not implemented.

	   Justification: There are better ways to do that.

       MERGEMAP directive
	   The HyTime, ISO13250 format is not implemented as there is currently no driver in the TM suite.

	   Justification: As long as there is no interest (read: bribe money), it never will.

       BASEURI directive
	   BASEURI is currently not honored for all local URIs.

	   Justification: I do not understand its purpose.

       encoding
	   This is currently ignored.

	   Justification: Will be added later.

       Subject Locators
	   It is a violation to use more than one subject locator per topic.

	   Justification: This is enforced by the underlying model.

       Source Locators
	   No source locators are created.

	   Justification: There is no such concept (thankfully) in the TM suite.

       role type:
	   If a role is not specified, it will remain default to "thing" and not - as the specification mandates - will be substituted by the
	   topic type.

	   Justification: First, a topic might have several types (which one to use?), secondly there might be several topics in a member and
	   thirdly, a role should generally NOT be the type of a member.

   Notes
       Merging
	   The parser (like any other in the TM suite) does NOT perform merging automatically.	You have to trigger that explicitely with the
	   method "consolidate".

       MERGEMAP directive
	   The strings determining the format are checked case-insensitive, so ASTMA and AsTMa are treated equally.

	   The location of the map can be defined via any URI handled by LWP::Simple.  If no scheme is provided file: will be assumed.

INTERFACE

   Methods
       deserialize
	   This method tries to parse the passed in text stream as LTM instance. It will raise an exception on the first parse error.

       serialize
	   This is not implemented.

SEE ALSO

       TM

AUTHOR INFORMATION

       Copyright 200[1-6], Robert Barta <drrho@cpan.org>, All rights reserved.

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
       http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html

perl v5.10.1							    2008-06-12						TM::Serializable::LTM(3pm)