RDF For Desktop Metadata?

claes writes "There is an article "Metadata for the desktop" that suggests that RDF should be used to describe data in desktop environments. This is an interesting idea. RDF is already used by Creative Commons to attach license metadata to its works. Mozilla also supports it. RDF was designed for the web, but can it also find its way to the desktop? And what metadata is most important to describe?"

Comments

What happened to forked files?

[Amiga Lover]

Are there any filesystems left that use forked files? Resource, Data and Metadata forks? Any at all?

While MacOS was at a disadvantage being one of the only ones to use it, wouldn't it have been an excellent advantage for ALL filesystems to be forked?

(I don't know the answer to this - anyone who knows more about filesystems, give your thoughts)

Re:What happened to forked files?

[Anonymous Coward]

> wouldn't it have been an excellent advantage
> for ALL filesystems to be forked?

Yes, but the trouble of compatibility remains. But there is a simple solution for this: fork as dir bundles: Instead of a file with a metadata fork you simply put the metadata file and the datafile into a dir and give that folder the name of the datafile. The current users copy the dir around and use its contents. But modern OSes treat the dir as if it is the datafile when the user interacts with it.

The metadata file says 'treat this dir as a file, when the user opens it please open the datafile called ... instead'

This is what Mac OS X does.

This has some cool advantages for the future of metadata because the metadata file can refere to multiple files inside the dir. Not just point out the datafile but also point out the Mac OS X icon (which is simply a tiff file) and even a custom kde icon. Yes you could have complete container documents like a webpage where individual objects can be individually for the knowledgeable user simply by opening the dir or access them as a whole.

It gets even better when you look at Applications in Mac OS X. Seemingly a file you can doubleclick to execute but actually a dir you can access with file organized in subdirs. Language dirs with UI files and text files you can translate, executables for different platforms, the required libs. It could even contain the source code yet it looks like, and by default works like, a single file which you can copy to the harddisk to install and drag to the trash to uninstall. That's how simple computing should be.

Re:Definition:...?

[doshell]

So, data describing metadata would be called metametadata?

What is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. I have no objection to a more extensive use of metadata. In fact I crave it - must have it.

But why oh why do people think that XML-based solutions is the way to go? An RDF solution would be bloat beyond belief. Ok, so it's not that bad for a few files, but when we get down to it - we don't have just a few files. We have plenty of them.

So why not use something smaler? A simpler protocol?
We can still have RDF-frontends for those that crave their daily XML-fix. Get real.

Re:Definition:...?

[Jugalator]

Yep, it's called like that.

I don't see with the thread started wanted a definition by Slashdotters in the first place, since it's already pretty well described and AFAIK the word doesn't have several meanings.

This is largely irrelevant if you have experience

[Real Troll Talk]

Since most of us are advanced computer users or even computer experts, I think we largely know how to search for content.

For one thing, I always give my filenames relevant titles, not things like document06.doc.

Also, I already know how to search through files for content using basic grep or advanced Windows searching.

I mean, sure, meta data like ID3 tags for MP3s that I steal offline are important because my Nomad mp3 player indexes based on that info, but in general I'd say meta data is not quite as important as some may suspect.

let's keep the Meta data simple...

[howman]

Who
What
Where
When
Why
and possibly How...

Re:FS support for metadata

[PhrostyMcByte]

I don't think you can attach metadata to files with NTFS. If you can, I havn't seen the API for it anywhere while coding.

Longhorn is using WinFS, which afaik is just a metadata layer slapped on top of NTFS.

Isn't it the same problem?

[pyrrhonist]

After reading this article, I'm wondering if metadata is really going to be as effective as the author thinks it is. The author points out that, "the computer makes us do the work of a filing clerk". In other words, when you place a files on your computer, you normally place them into a folders to organize them, which is, "not fun". The author implicitly claims that metadata will solve this situation.

But that's the problem! If it's not fun to organize items into folders, how is it anymore fun to add metadata to a file? I'm not talking about text files. Text files are easy, because you can pull the metadata out of them automatically (in fact, you can do this now with search tools). I'm talking about files that have to be explicitly tagged with metadata, like pictures. How is adding metadata to each picture file to categorize your vacation pictures any less laborious than placing the vaction pictures into their own directory?

That's the problem as I see it. You still end up being a filing clerk! If people don't even organize their folders now, are people going to use metadata when it's available? Will improved search capabilities make users want to be clerks?

In a nutshell, isn't it the same problem?

Re:Isn't it the same problem?

[value_added]

When I was a kid and would ask aloud where something was, my mum would say, "Look where you put it." It annoyed me to no end, of course, but years later I find myself "putting things where they belong" and emptying my mind of everything else, much like putting phone numbers in a phone book so one doesn't have to clutter up one's my mind remembering any of them.

My own opinion is that there is no substitute for "putting things in folders." Boring, but true. Regular expressions and databases can go a long way (even for the average Joe), but it's as brainless as it is fast to look in an appropriately named folder. Not everyone agrees, of course:

Apple Unveils Faster Searching
Apple Throws Spotlight on Search

RDF is not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

I've yet to see a real world example of how to use RDF that wasn't for research(ie to prove RDF works) purposes. Most of the projects listed for semantic web are purely research, toy projects, or completely unproven. I know of several companies that have tried, but they usually end up extending the hell out of RDF to make it practical and useful. That makes me think RDF is flawed.

Another format..

[12357bd]

Good, yet another format to use/suffer!

No matter how good those formats are (XML/RDF/etc) they all fail at the simplicity norm, the KISS principle.

In the example of the article, by not using a simple text oriented format they innecesarily complicates the access by any program to these values, and that leads to the second point.
The computational cost involved in parsing / validating all those formats; the day that our cpu's can process hundreds or thousands of simultaneous parsings without a noticeable impact on performance, that day it could start to make sense to popularize his usage, until then, they are a luxury and as such restricted to a limited (especialized) usage.

On the RDF case, metadata is data, the 'meta' part is a human hability and can be used wherever we want, no need for a special format. By pretending to format the 'metadata' concept we are just defining a new stream format, and if we consider how wide the 'meta' concept is, it seems dificult to limit to a simple ontology. The result? the need of another international consortium to stablish a reasonable set of vocabularies, big deal!

I think there are better ways to spend our cpu cicles than to parse verbose formats, but how knows?