What is LEXTENDER?
This Lexikos web app can help you more easily build your own ontology and
enhance it. It works by converting a highly expressive, easily read file
format we call a PSI-lexikon into metadata formatted under
Topic Map standards.
LEXTENDER is simple - just a file-to-file translator. Lexikons themselves are also
simple, as their editors need never know that they compile into such a format, or
may migrate further into any alternative format(s) you may require.
All editors need to know is that executable vocabulary
is defined within these structured text files, so local file format conventions matter. They
also must ensure that all symbols get used consistently with their web-published definitions.
The Goal of LEXTENDER is Author Productivity
LEXTENDER eases the building of semantic lexicons, by compiling documentation
from the same source code used to define the metadata:
- Each Lexikon defines conveniently sized sets of associated Concepts
- A Concept may be just one topic in a structure relating many dozens
Defining every isolated Concept in a GUI editor gets not only tedious, but hard
philosophically. Many Concepts have meaning only as parts of larger structures.
To model them, the best you can do is really interrelate all parts of the whole.
That is why graphs, semantic nets, tables and charts are useful props.
A Lexikon holds such models. Each is a short ASCII text file formalized into
a multi-faceted outline of specific conceptual graphs, object structures, etc.
Such concepts and their parts are easiest to define with compact, named hierarchies,
so LEXTENDER lets its users define and edit them using exactly this notation - the
line-oriented outline, formalized into typed patterns.
It Dumps Multiple Metadata Output Formats
When LEXTENDER is given any such file, it can produce a variety of
different output from it, each of which is merely a different logical
view of the conceptual structure(s) defined within that input
file. Important views include:
- A web page of PSIs that define the structure in human-readable HTML
- A stream of LTM, an ASCII metadata format easy to further transform
- A stream of WORDS, the expression format expected by MODELER
- OWL-like constraints in pseudo-code, easy to embed or dump as co-files
Final output for the last two emerges after passage through MODELER, whose export
logic is designed to dump a specified subset in one of today's main XML metadata formats:
- XTM, the 2001 standard from ISO, meant for Topic Map engines
- RDF, the 2004 standard from W3C, meant for Description Logic
Whichever set of formats or ontologies your application requires, LEXTENDER can be
reconfigured to handle it. Then, if you change any component Lexikon, our build
code can effectively regenerate all its dependent views at once, including any
PSIs and web documentation (which limits problems of their consistency).
Productivity Gains should be Common
To learn more about LEXTENDER's modeling powers, see working Lexikons and web demos,
just email us and ask. Explain the graph types, notations, concepts and ontologies your
own project goals require, and if they are not yet supported, we can work to get them
into place for you soon.
We believe our high-level Lexikons (existing or new) can greatly speed your ontology
development, but every case is different. So contact us, and let us help estimate
how much time and money they might potentially save you.
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