Vizigator

The Topic Maps model describes the knowledge structures inherent in an underlying body of information. This model, which reflects the associative mode typical of the way humans think, can then be intuitively perused in different ways.

One possibility is a text-based interface. The Ontopia Omnigator uses a form-based navigation paradigm that is commonly known and used by most of us every day when using the web.

However, often a picture or graphic can be easier to grasp than a wordy description. The Ontopia Vizigator ("vi[z]ual navigator") uses a graphical interface to provide an additional method of topic map navigation. Although Vizigator can be used on its own, it is also well-suited to complement a text-based interface. The following is a graphical visualization of the Puccini topic, with additional detail about one of his operas, Tosca.

Components

Vizigator consists of three components which are related/dependent on each other.

• VizDesktop™ - designer's configuration tool
  VizDesktop can be used without any other OKS browsing environment. However, it is primarily a configuration tool for application designers to determine whether and/or how various topic types and associations will be graphically displayed.
• VizLet™ - reusable applet component
  All of the visualization capability of VizDesktop, but without the configuration toolkit, VizLet can be used within other web applications to bring topic map visualization to any web site,
• VizPlugin™ - Omnigator plug-in
  Based on VizLet, VizPlugin can be used to visualize any topic currently under view in Omnigator.

All three components are available in all OKS Developer and Runtime license editions. VizPlugin is also available within the OKS Samplers free download and the Omnigator Runtime License.