Paolo, I took your advice and also obtained "Programming the Semantic Web." It arrived yesterday.
On first glance, that looks like a nice, easy introduction in part I. Semantic Data. Not sure what I'll find when I get into chapter 2. Expressing Meaning, but it should be interesting and it appears well-written. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Paolo Castagna [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 09:22 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Interest in JENA/RDF (was RE: Versioned/Historical Documentation ...) 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/ > > > [ .. ] >
