[Xesam] Nepomuk/Xesam future (was Re: condition of 1.0 ?)

[Roberto Guido]

On Friday 24 April 2009 10:54:24 you wrote:
> I am working on tracker, and
> we are using nepomuk.
>
I cannot understand how a project listed in the Freedesktop directory may not 
only support a de-facto imposed specification but also drop support for the 
language (Xesam) expressely aiming at interoperability and easy of use.
Probably (surely) Xesam 1.0 ontology is actually more steps back the Nepomuk 
one, but also (as you suggested) has his own pros, such as a more confortable 
query mechanism: I'm looking for a re-introduction of the Xesam support in 
Tracker, ASAP.

> The process:
> 1) Application developer is working on his application and discover that
> certain property makes sense in the ontology
> 2) Open a bug requesting that details
> 3) Discussion in the bugzilla/mailing list about this
> 4) Resolution of the bug. If it is "commit", apply the changes (including
> updated doc and changelog)
> 5) Publish ASAP. <- How to handle versions?
>
I really like the proposal for an ontology sharing system, and it could be one 
of the starting points for Xesam 2.0. Given that this may be considered 
a "brainstorm thread", probably we can start detailed discussion in a more 
specific thread.

But I also want to add my 2 cents to the "Xesam future" bag, not with a formal 
proposal but just some thought, already partially mentioned in previous 
mails. Please correct me in case of error.

In the real world semantic informations already exists in form of microformats 
(vCard) of also proprietary formats (ID3), and mapping them 1:1 in a new 
ontology may not be the solution, above all if the introduction of a new 
format to harvest imply the update of the whole set.
I think Xesam may be something more like the "Semantic Space" speculated in 
Gnome's wiki (http://live.gnome.org/AndersFeder/SemanticSpace), reusing 
existing ontologies also spreading the web or supposed to appear in near 
future to provide a "unified APIs and specs for desktop search" (as described 
in the homepage for the project). Nepomuk ontology is great, but just solves 
a portion of the problem.
That would means strip down most of work done in 1.0 and review the complete 
project from beginning, but also will provide an effective tool for "Semantic 
Desktop" as intended as (from Wikipedia) "data is more easily shared between 
different applications or tasks".

-- 
Roberto -MadBob- Guido
http://claimid.com/madbob