What is it?
-----------
This base package contains Perl extensions for Topic Maps

   http://www.isotopicmaps.org/

With it you can

  - manipulate topic maps via an API
  - navigate through TMs via a TMDM-like API (almost TMAPI)
  - read/write AsTMa 1.x and 2.x resources
  - read LTM resources
  - read/write XTM 1/2 resources
  - create virtualized topic maps
  - use a topic map backend store
  - add drivers for your own native store
  - add indices to speed up things
  - query topic maps via TMQL (query language, in the working)
  - and more

Prerequisites
-------------

Of course, TM::* relies heavily on other Perl packages. Most of them
(hopefully all) should be resolved automatically if you use the CPAN
frontend.

Installation
------------

This module should be completely installable via the cpan frontend.
To build the extensions manually, unpack this distribution somewhere,
and exercise the usual incantation:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

You will need perl version 5.8 or better to install these modules.

There may also be Debian packages for this generation.

Documentation
-------------

You can learn about Topic Maps in general at

  http://www.isotopicmaps.org/  (standards)
  http://kill.devc.at/taxonomy/term/22 (my blog)

  http://topicmaps.bond.edu.au/ (tutorials, other stuff)
  http://easytopicmaps.com/     (tutorials, lotta links and hints)

  http://astma.it.bond.edu.au/  (shorthand notation used by the authors)

For this particular package I also recommend the
tutorials in

  maps/tutorials.atm

Support
-------

You can either

  - mail to the author (rho@devc.at), or
  - discuss this in one of the topicmap mailing lists, or
  - find me in the freenode #topicmaps IRC channel, or
  - create a bug entry in rt.cpan.org (preferred)

Copyright 200[1-8] Robert Barta, rho@devc.at

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.