CTM (Compact Topic Maps) is a text-based notation for representing topic maps. It provides a simple, lightweight notation that complements the existing XML-based interchange syntax defined in [XTM] and can be used for

• manually authoring topic maps;
• providing human-readable examples in documents;
• serving as a common syntactic basis for TMCL and TMQL.

The principal design criteria of CTM are compactness, ease of human authoring, and maximum readability. CTM supports all constructs of the TMDM, except item identifiers on constructs that are not topics.

This part of ISO/IEC13250 should be read in conjunction with TMDM since the interpretation of the CTM syntax is defined through a mapping from the syntax to the data model there defined.

The full standard text is available here.

The current development and the open issues can be viewed .