Since the stabilisation of XTM, an XML-based notation for Topic Maps, the interest in authoring Topic Maps has increased.

While the automatic generation of topic maps from backend databases into XTM can easily be achieved, manual authoring in XTM is tedious and error-prone. One option is to use XML aware development tools, such as XML-editors or XML IDEs. While feasible, generic XML editors offer little help above syntactical conformance. Another option is to use integrated development environments for Topic Maps (server or client-side) as they have appeared in the market.

AsTMa= is a linear, textual notation for Topic Map information. The motivation was to create a shorthand notation in contrast to XTM which is mainly suitable for interchange purposes. This motivation it shares with comparable languages as LTM.