Re: Mapping hAudio Microformat to RDFa

Manu,

First of all, thanks for the input! I think it will be very valuable for
everyone involved to pursue this...

Just a quick reflection on the last items you have, namely the way
forward. I would just like to add yet another item for you to consider.

We had a so called 'incubator group' on Multimedia Semantics[1]. I said
we 'had', because that group is just wrapping up; they plan to publish
their results as somewhat more formal documents sometimes this week (so,
please, keep an eye on the SW Activity News page[2] or simply the W3C
home page) and then the group will be formally wrapped up. The draft
versions of those reports can already be accessed from the group's page[1].

However... and that is where your mail really comes in: the group is
currently working on a new charter to start a next round for the
Incubator Group. The charter is still under formation (again, this work
is led by Raphaël); my feeling is that this may be perfect opportunity
both in time and in topic for you or your group to join that group and
work towards a stable set of terms.

Do you think that could be feasible? If you think this could be done,
you should contact Raphaël directly.

Sincerely

Ivan


[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/mmsem/
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/anews



Manu Sporny wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> I've been in contact with Ben Adida for a couple of weeks now and he had
> asked me to make a post explaining one of our RDFa projects. For the
> past six months, we have been working with the Microformats (uF)
> community to generate a semantic vocabulary for audio, video and images
> on the web.
> 
> It took approximately 3 months to create an audio Microformat (hAudio)
> and move it through the gauntlet that is the Microformats process. This
> left us with a great appreciation for the logical, scientific process
> that the uF community employs. However, when it came time to implement
> the vocabulary, we saw issues regarding the Microformats implementation
> approach.
> 
> The key issues we found are:
> 
>  1. A lack of namespacing making property name clashing a real danger.
>  2. The requirement that uF parsers should be scope-less.
> 
> I would be more than happy to give details of these two issues at a
> later time.
> 
> That being said, we would still like to help create a set of semantic
> vocabularies for media (audio, video, and images) using the Microformats
> process. However, for implementation, we would like to propose the use
> of RDFa.
> 
> There are a number of people and organizations that we are working with
> to make this happen. Mike Kaply of Operator fame, the Microformats
> community, the Firefox people, the Songbird guys, the Miro/Democracy
> Media player folks, CD Baby - one of the largest digital distribution
> music providers in the world and a smattering of open source software
> advocates are among the people with which we are associated. Our goal is
> to make these vocabularies a widely adopted standard by using an open,
> swift and accurate standards creation process.
> 
> I have made an attempt, with a great deal of help from Ben, to map the
> hAudio Microformat to RDFa. He had made it clear that the RDFa
> attributes are still in a state of flux. We did our best to illustrate
> the hAudio draft standard given a changing set of attributes.. The draft
> hAudio RDFa draft specification can be found here:
> 
> http://wiki.digitalbazaar.com/en/HAudio_RDFa
> 
> Our goals in working with the RDFa community are below, feedback on
> whether or not these are achievable would be great:
> 
> 1. Give this list a solid "emerging standard" use case using hAudio.
> 2. Help this list map Microformats to RDFa.
> 3. Get some sort of W3C support or acceptance behind hAudio
>    RDFa. Perhaps getting it on a "semantic vocabulary for media"
>    standards track?
> 4. Gather public support for hAudio RDFa via Firefox 3, Songbird,
>    Miro, record labels, Creative Commons and a variety of other
>    organizations that need to mark up information about audio.
> 
> -- manu
> 

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf