Re: mapping table 2.0

At 14:48  +0900 25/02/09, Felix Sasaki wrote:
>David Singer Ç„ÇÒÇÕèëÇ´ÇÐǵLJ:
>>On the discussion of ontology and complexity, 
>>forgive me if this has already been brought up, 
>>but it seems as if there are at least two 
>>places where the ontology and complexity can be 
>>evident.
>>
>>One is in the obvious place: in the expression 
>>of metadata. This gives rise to complex (often 
>>XML) structures to describe what is needed; 
>>things like
>><person role="author">
>><name role="given" order="2">Blatherick</name>
>><name role="given" order="1">Fred</name>
>><name role="patronymic">Bloggs</name>
>><date role="birth" type="ISO-8601">1937-04-01</date>
>></person>
>>
>>and so on. Every reader is burdened with the ontology tagging.
>>
>>
>>However, another approach is to define the 
>>tagging itself more precisely. For example, one 
>>might say
>>"TDRL" is the DATE of the PUBLICATION of the WORK
>>TEXT is the NAME of the PERSON that WROTE the WORDS of the WORK
>>TAUB is the DATE of BIRTH of the PERSON that 
>>EDITED the TRANSLATION of the WORDS of the 
>>TRANSCRIPT of the AUDIO of the WORK
>>
>>
>>
>>and so on. I realize that this only helps with 
>>putting the tags onto a firmer foundation; it 
>>does not help with (de-)composing tags (e.g. 
>>the XML above, where personal-name is 
>>decomposed), and nor does it help much with 
>>formalizing the type of the values (e.g. the 
>>type of the date string above), unless the tag 
>>has a required associated type.
>>
>>But such tags might make it possible to do 
>>metadata conversion and i18n. But getting such 
>>an ontology developed may be a research 
>>effort...
>
>If I recall correctly you mentioned that kinds of efforts as
>"(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')"
>and also mentioned your preference for
>"(b) have a small set of tags which we encourage 
>should be implemented in any standard."
>in
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-media-annotation/2008Sep/0045.html
>
>Hence I am wondering: Do you think that the 
>mapping table is a useful contribution to b), or 
>rather to a)? What value and purpose do you see 
>in the mapping table in general?
>

I think the table reveals both (i) the set of 
tags which have broad support and (ii) the set of 
tags which (might) have broad agreement in their 
definition (i.e. share a common formal 
ontological description).  So I'd say 'both'!
-- 
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.