Re: Intro and 'use cases'

Dear all,

Thanks David, I mostly agree with what you wrote.
Some comments inlined.

>> There are two solutions, perhaps, to this problem: (a) relate all 
>> media annotation systems by means of a firm semantic background, so 
>> that a machine translator can do the best it can ('the tag called 
>> title is the formal_name of the work', 'the tag called author is the 
>> formal_name of the person who created the words of the work'); (b) 
>> have a small set of tags which we encourage should be implemented in 
>> any standard.
>>
>> We prefer (b) now; (a) is a research project, not a standards 
>> activity. As a basis here, we'd like to consider the 
>> very-commonly-used ID3 tags (to the extent that they are defined).
> 
> Our charter
> http://www.w3.org/2008/01/media-annotations-wg.html
> says that we ought to develop a "simple lingua franca" between existing 
> standards. I translate "simple" into "also useable *as is*", that is 
> into what you describe as (b). I also agree that we should concentrate 
> on (b), and I think there is a some agreement in this group about that. 
> What do others think?

I'm not sure I agree with this distinction. How will you classify the 
RDF Schema of Dublin Core (DC) [1]? How will you classifiy the IPTC 
Photo Metadata Standard [2] that does contain a formal definition of the 
properties as well as particular implementations (NAR, XMP)?

I think we want to do something between a) and b).
ID3 is a good and bad example: the format does not enforce the meaning 
of specific properties, and anyone can add new properties. But there is 
a de facto set of properties commonly used, and this is your b) 
approach. However, users do not consistently used the properties. For 
example, when you need to describe your classical music songs, you don't 
know if you should only use the 'author' property, or add a 'composer', 
'performer', etc property. There is hence interop problem with ID3.
The MMSEM XG has proposed a formal definition of the most commonly used 
ID3 tags [3] using the Music Ontology [4]. This is the a) approach.

My 2c.

   Raphaël

[1] http://dublincore.org/2003/03/24/dces
[2] 
http://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/2008/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata-2008_1.pdf
[3] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/mmsem/XGR-interoperability/#music
[4] http://musicontology.com/

-- 
Raphaël Troncy
CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science),
Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: raphael.troncy@cwi.nl & raphael.troncy@gmail.com
Tel: +31 (0)20 - 592 4093
Fax: +31 (0)20 - 592 4312
Web: http://www.cwi.nl/~troncy/

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2008 08:25:06 UTC