Goals of Topic Maps

• shall be straight forwardly usable over the Internet.

•   shall support a wide variety of applications.

• shall be compatible with XML, XLink, and ISO 13250.

•   It shall be easy to write programs that process XTM documents.

• The number of optional features is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally zero.

• The documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.

• The design should be prepared quickly.

• The design shall be formal and concise.

• The documents shall be easy to create.

• Terseness markup is of minimal importance.