After over 400 commits and one month time Maiana introduces interesting new features:

• Each user who is logged-in will discover two new possibilities to create a topic map in the Dashboard.
  • First, there is the tab called “URL”: If you ever wanted to create a topic map by giving an URL that referes to an XTM, CTM or LTM file, you may do so now! Because of the URL being stored, the topic map is updated automatically if the referenced file changes.
  • Second, one may spot the “Exploration” tab: Here, we want to give the users the unrivaled experience to explore interlinked Topic Map fragments of a yet to grow Topic Map LOD cloud. To gain access to this cloud, a server needs to provide the glue that links those fragments together. This glue are the so called “more information” occurrences of a certain type that Maiana is expecting. As soon as a user requests “more information”, a new fragment is downloaded and added to the exploration map. To start, try exploring the projects provided by topicmapslab.de by copying this URL: http://www.topicmapslab.de/projects.xtm to the described tab.
• Do you want to search user names, map names or topic maps itself? For the first time, Maiana offers a search facility:
  • For example, search for “Puccini” in the Opera topic map and you’ll not only get the topic describing Puccini, but also the operas written by him or containing “Puccini” in their names and so on.
  • Using the search while being on the Dashboard leads to additional results: user names and map names containing the search string are included in the search results. So from now on, it is more simple to find users or maps one is interested in.
• Since a few days ago, a user called maiana is used by the Maiana team to upload and share interesting and/or official topic maps, like the TMCL meta schema. Follow the “maiana” user to easily get updates and access to these maps.
• The “Topic Map” lists in the Dashboard have been edited: information about your topic maps, the ones you are watching and the ones you’ve been invited to are now summarized in one box. Icons indicate the type of the map, distinguishing between maps created by uploading a file from disk or URL, Containers (introduced in this news) and exploration maps. Coloured vs. greyed-out icons show how many users watch or are invited to your maps and one click expands the list to show the names of these users. A small red locked-sign additionally indicate private maps while a blue overlay sign points to maps being flagged as schema.
• We updated to the latest TMQL4J engine that supports the current TMQL draft. An information button displays the version of the engine that is loaded when querying a map.
• As also mentioned above, Containers constitute one kind of topic map that Maiana is providing. A Container virtually merges other topic maps that were added to it. As of this release, for each topic page we provide links to the “original” topics whose equality led to the merging into the topic one is viewing (here, two topics describing Germany have been merged).
• Last but not least, Maiana introduces a new version of the Lab’s TMCL Validator. It validates a given topic map against schemas compatible to the current draft. What is new: Some users own topic maps which already contain their schema information. Now, these maps can be validated also without having to select a schema topic map. See the doc for a more detailed description on the validator behavior.

We constantly improve the design and functionality of Maiana. Have a look at it and please give us feedback.