[Xesam] An open-source project for desktop ontology maintenance

[Sebastian Trüg]

On Wednesday 06 May 2009 11:10:51 Evgeny Egorochkin wrote:
> The more I look at it the more I like it:
>
> Ontologies can be avialable as a separate package in distributions. We
> could agree to install it to some app-/environment-neutral place.

exactly.

> We can have a git repo with a master branch and branches that exchange
> patches with kde and gnome repos. This way we can tap into translation
> infrastructure of both projects.
> Also we could have a nepomuk-stable branch as well to see just how far away
> we have drifted etc.

sounds good.

> So now ontology format and location needs to be determined. Anything
> standard like rdf/xml, turtle etc is fine by me.

I vote for trig as it is the only one allowing to have named graphs in the 
source.

> As to location of the repository. It's small so can be migrated in several
> minutes and we can expect that no significant number of people are going to
> start pulling our repo right away. So github&co will work just fine for
> now.
>
> On 5 мая 2009 22:15:10 Sebastian Trüg wrote:
> > OK, I am convinced.
> > I only want to say that my idea of a desktop ontologies package would
> > also include installing ontologies such as RDF, RDFS, NAO, NRL, and PIMO.
> > Basically all ontologies desktop applications need.
> >
> > But maybe that is no problem at all...
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Sebastian
> >
> > On Tuesday 05 May 2009 18:32:15 Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2009-05-05 at 18:49 +0300, Ivan Frade wrote:
> > > > Hi
> > > >
> > > >  Why not...
> > > >
> > > > * XESAM open source project that maintains three pieces
> > > >   - An ontology (based on nepomuk [keeping names etc.], community
> > >
> > >       driven).
> > >
> > > >   - An API for client applications (give it a proper name)
> > > >   - A query language (very probably sparQL)
> > > >
> > > >  This makes happy the people in KDE, GNOME, freedesktop and open
> > > > source fans. It is simple and understandable. Am i missing anything?
> > >
> > > No you are not. I think some other people might be missing things :)
> > >
> > > Hasn't that always been what Xesam 2.0 is (going to be) about?
> > >
> > >
> > > Now apparently there's a request to have a more community driven
> > > project structure for Xesam 2.0. Which means that for the ontology we
> > > need:
> > >
> > > - A git repository with some accounts for some people
> > >
> > > - A format (I'm assuming .trig or .ttl is perfect for this)
> > >
> > > - Scripts for generating the website out of the git repository
> > >
> > > - A bug tracker so that we can irritate each other with bugs.
> > > Preferably a bug tracker that is actually good (at enabling us to
> > > irritate each other). Not just a @#*& trac website.
> > >
> > > - A procedure that we agree with Nepomuk upstream to get our Xesam 2.0
> > >   ontology requirements into upstream Nepomuk. If Nepomuk upstream
> > > wants this, of course. Else we just fork it. But apparently nobody at
> > > Nepomuk is against letting Xesam 2.0 use Nepomuk, or against letting
> > > Xesam 2.0's people help define improvements to upstream Nepomuk?
> > >
> > >   That's great. I mean, then let's just make some agreements on how we
> > >   communicate change requests to Nepomuk upstream?!
> > >
> > >   What is certain is that several projects, like Tracker, need a very
> > >   fast response time for their ontology changes. Which means < than a
> > >   week. I assume upstream Nepomuk wants to take a more restricted
> > >   approach and wants us to prove that our experiments work before
> > >   accepting said ontology changes?
> > >
> > > I personally hope that some time in future we'll just have a package
> > > called "nepomuk-ontology-VERSION.tar.gz" instead of the directory that
> > > we are shipping as part of the Tracker package [1]. Note that we have a
> > > few requirements like having a load-order in the filename (much like
> > > rc.d directories work). But nothing that we can't easily agree on.
> > >
> > >
> > > Which means that for the DBus API we need:
> > >
> > > - Unit tests
> > >
> > > - The introspection XML in above mentioned git repo
> > >
> > > - Documentation
> > >
> > > And for the query language I don't think we need anything specific in
> > > the repository. Except maybe the SPARQL and SPARQL UPDATE
> > > specifications as part of the documentation.
> > >
> > >
> > > [1] http://git.gnome.org/cgit/tracker/tree/data/ontologies
> > >
> > >
> > > Looking at the list above, for example freedesktop.org provides all
> > > what we need. We just need to ask. Right?
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xesam mailing list
> > Xesam at lists.freedesktop.org
> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xesam