TMchartis- A Tool Set for Designing Multiple Problem-Oriented Visualizations for Topic Maps

J. L. Borges once wrote about a Chinese emperor, who commanded the creation of an accurate map of China [1]. The resulting map was as detailed as possible but therefore it had to match the size of China. What use would make such a map, especially if you have a narrow navigation question, e.g. where the forbidden city is located? This legend makes the central problems involved in graphical visualization of Topic Maps quite clear [2,3]. Topic Maps is a powerful knowledge representing paradigm, which formal models or one could say charts a relevant problem domain. This results in a high amount of detailed semantic information like topic names, relations, scope information as well as occurrences. To support navigation and retrieval it is obviously not very helpful to visualize all information modeled in a topic map [4]. The resulting question therefore is: Which part of the information should be displayed and which visualization approach is the most suitable one [5,6]?