Re: [Bulk] Different uses of RDF

Edward,

your proposal sounds excellent, it may seem obvious, but you will  
need to create a schema, which you and others can then point to.
an example describing Graphical User Interfaces is here: http:// 
www.peepo.co.uk/temp/gui-schema#
and it is referenced here: http://www.peepo.co.uk/

it might also be worth considering microformats.

cheers

Jonathan Chetwynd



On 5 Oct 2006, at 16:57, Edward Bryant wrote:


I am working on a open content non-profit project involving the  
publication of U.S. court documents.

http://www.opengavel.com

I am new to RDF technologies and I was wondering if someone could  
give me some advice and steer me in the right direction on where RDF  
may be useful for my project.

The most obvious use of RDF would be as a method to describe metadata  
for the court documents the project posts on its website. Currently  
the documents are converted from the original (usually PDF or HTML  
files) into XML markup, that XML data gets transform via XSL into an  
standardized HTML version of the document. Since the site posts the  
original PDF, the raw XML version, and the new HTML version, my main  
confusion concerns where to place the metadata (in its own file, in  
each file, multiple separate files, etc.) I imagine I could generate  
the RDF in the new HTML during the XSL transformation, but should I  
also generate a second version of the XML file with the RDF markup?  
If the point is to be machine understandable, the metadata on the  
HTML version would only identify a document that can be displayed  
(not very useful but good for search engine indexing). RDF on the XML  
file, however, would present an opportunity for machine processing  
and understanding of the underlying XML data, especially if the the  
RDF also defined what the documents other tags meant ( e.g.,  
citations, footnotes, etc.) so that they could be more useful.  
Although the project's goal is currently limited to publication or  
republication of existing court documents, the ultimate goal is to  
create a foundation for others to create web-based legal research  
tools, so the ease at which others can automatically read, process,  
and understand the documents is obviously important.

I also found myself creating database tables that define things such  
as proper abbreviations (U.S. court names, etc.). I assume an RDF  
that defines these relationships, which is then parsed and loaded  
into the database would be the best method because the knowledge  
(court name, abbreviation, state, court circuit, etc.) could be  
reused by me or others more easily, right? Unlike the metadata  
situation this would be a more pure knowledge use of RDF, right?

Thanks, any advice is appreciated.

Edward B.

Received on Friday, 6 October 2006 06:01:46 UTC