When working with Topic Maps the first concern is to author one. In this process various decisions have to be made how to build a map consistently and systematically. Sooner or later there is a call for a constraint language, i.e. a formalism to capture how a map about a particular theme should typically look like.

Once a map is built, it will be used as a repository of the knowledge it contains. In many cases the map will be displayed in a generic topic map browser. Others use the map transparently for the end user and treat it like a conventional database backend. In both cases applications need (a) access to the information in the topic map and (b) have to generate output for the end user. This process is usually facilitated by a query language.

Vendors have suggested authoring, constraining and query languages and so also has the research group at Bond University. In the following we support our case for AsTMa*, a Topic Map language framework, with an extended use case covering literature references. The objective of the use case is to test the AsTMa* language family for expressiveness and internal consistency supporting the TM engineer in all relevant phases of an TM application. In this first part of three installments we concentrate on the authoring phase; we will translate basic literature meta information into the Topic Map framework using AsTMa= as authoring language. Parts two and three will cover constraining and querying maps.

We assume that you are loosely familiar with AsTMa*. In the case you are not, you may want to consult the relevant tutorials. As this is work in progress, though, please be aware that the language versions in the specifications and tutorials may diverge slightly from that in the following presentation.