I am on the PPMC of the Apache OpenOffice.org project.  I also pay attention to 
the ODF Toolkit project.

My interest in Jena is generic, as is that of some colleagues who are 
interested in semantic markup notions.  And I am a neophyte around RDF.  The 
books I have read so far (one for a course) I found to be junk with regard to 
how RDF was handled and worse with respect to the semantic web.  I have some 
that I have not read (including Shelly Powers' book) that it would be good to 
attempt.  I do need to finally cough up a few bucks and get a copy of "Semantic 
Web for the Working Ontologist", recommended to me by other inquisitive folk.

Also, I am on the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) Technical Committee.

As you have noticed already, the ODF Toolkit project is working toward 
implementing the RDF support that there is in ODF.  Some ODF processors are 
incorporating support for RDF in various ways.  It has been demonstrated in 
mobile implementations of ODF viewers.

ODF has a compound package structure based on the use of Zip as a container.  
(There is also a single XML file mapping of the format, but most of the RDF 
provisions are incompatible with that case.)

RDF shows up in the ODF 1.2 format in four ways:

 1. The package specification (part 3) includes provisions for RDF files being 
incorporated in a package.  There is also a specific package file, a 
manifest.rdf file that has some vaguely-defined usage.  It is always RDF/XML.  
There is an OWL ontology that can be used in that file (or anywhere, for that 
matter).  It is described as providing a manifest of other RDF files in the 
package, but that may not be exactly right.  It appears to be a manifest of 
where there is RDF in other files (not necessarily RDF files) in the package.  
Maybe both.  I must figure that out some day.

 2. The main document specification (part 1) adds an additional OWL definition 
that can be used to have more-refined material in RDF that have subjects and 
resources in the XML files that are part of the ODF document.

 3. RDFa notions have been adapted for use within the XML element that carries 
the main content for an ODF document.  These usages are governed by the RNG 
grammar and they may be incomplete.  (Why RDFa when the content element is XML 
and <rdf:RDF> is embeddable as an extension anyhow is a legitimate question for 
which I have no answer whatsoever.)

 4. There is a presumed use of GRDDL (a single attribute in the root-element 
XML tag of the ODF document) for somehow extracting all of the RDF and non-RDF 
metadata embedded in the content material.

I shall refrain from expressing a strong opinion about this, but if you were to 
suggest it is not good work, I would not flinch.

So another reason for my interest in Jena is to find specimens of good work and 
a basis for good tools that make sense out of whatever it is that has been 
enabled by the ODF specification having a check-mark in the RDF-supported? box.

Finally, I am unaware of any way that an ODF 1.2 document containing RDF can be 
converted to a Microsoft Office document and somehow carry the RDF over.  
Furthermore, I would be absolutely amazed were Microsoft's own support for the 
ODF format to do anything but ignore all RDF material in an ODF document and 
ever preserve/produce any of it.  I find that inconceivable based on how 
difficult it would be to make an interoperable implementation based on what 
there is in the ODF 1.2 specification.  Another reason to understand Jena, I 
think.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Paolo Castagna [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 06:37
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Versioned/Historical Documentation (was RE: How to decide to 
release ...)

[ ... ]

My curiosity, are you using Apache Jena and/or planning to use it in the near
future?

Are you involved in OpenOffice and/or the Apache ODF Toolkit?

Do you know if there is anything interesting going on there in relation to
RDF we should be aware of?

Looking at Apache ODF Toolkit and how it relates to RDF (and Apache Jena) and/or
Apache Tika and/or Apache Any23 and/or Apache Nutch is on my (too long) todo
list.

Paolo

  [1] http://incubator.apache.org/odftoolkit/


[ .. ]

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