Re: Objects as RDF subgraphs

On Wednesday, July 17, 2002, at 06:47  AM, Damian Steer wrote:
> I'm about to start work on an(other) rdf browser. The idea is to
> present rdf data in a 'coarse grained' way - eg vcard data as a box
> containing name, tel no, photo etc.

Oh dear, not another one!

I'm working on a program called Memesh (Cocoa, Obj-C) to do something 
rather similar. Basically the interface searches and displays objects, 
deciding on "display plugins" to use based on the object type. The 
generic object displays arbitrary metadata and a bunch of text (sorta 
like an email message) but you could make custom plugins for people, 
music, etc. to display the properties in a different way.

> The question is - how? It seems like the best thing to use would be an 
> rdf query to a) express what subgraphs the class 'wraps' and maybe b) 
> represent the fields of the class.

I guess I don't understand the problem. You display an object and its 
properties (and possibly reverse properties). If custom views need more 
information than that they simply request it. Otherwise it's just a link 
to some other object which you can examine similarly.

I guess this leads one to take a flat view of things ( {:x 
:workPhoneNumber "y" .} rather than { :x  :work [ :phone [ :number 
"y" ]]. }) but I think that's a good idea anyway.

--
Aaron Swartz [http://www.aaronsw.com] 
4FAC4838B7D8D13FA6D92EDB4145521E79F0DF4B
I will be in San Diego for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention the 24-26 
July.

Received on Friday, 19 July 2002 00:35:45 UTC