Hi,
thanks for all these info, helpful and interesting. A few more comments inline.
Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
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.
One good book is "Programming the Semantic Web":
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596153823.do
I really recommend it to you, before the
"Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist".
If you have time for just one, I suggest you pick the first one.
My humble opinion.
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.)
In relation to RDFa see also:
https://github.com/shellac/java-rdfa (by Damian, Apache Jena committer and PPMC
member). :-)
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.
In my humble opinion RDFa as superseded the need for GRDDL.
I could be wrong on this and this is just my personal opinion.
Microdata vs. RDFa is a big/long debate to follow.
One requires/demand more governance than the other, thinking about that in
relation to Microdata and RDFa is IMHO an interesting (non technical) perspective.
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.
Very interesting... in particular in the context of Apache Software Foundation.
Thanks for sharing all this with us.
Paolo
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/
[ .. ]
