Re: Open Document Environment (ODE)

["Greg Ferguson" <gferg hoop timonium sgi com>]

On Jan 9,  1:05am, Aaron Turner wrote:
> Subject: Re: Open Document Environment (ODE)
> ...
> 7a) Local/LAN/WAN retreval is going to be hard.

I think people need a retrieval capability that scales. It
should (must?) work in all these situations. One huge master
site (albeit mirrored in other locations) certainly makes
life easier for the administrators of such a system. But, I
should be able to examine/peruse just the content I have
locally and then be able to jump to the site-based content
store and/or "master" collection when desired.

> 8) Knowing what software is installed on a users computer and then
> showing what documentation relates to that is rather interesting.
> Very interesting actually.  It's also has a ton of privacy vs.
> usability issues too.

Have you seen the work of the Dublin Core group, the work
done by Debian Doc project or what has been done by Paul
Jones and the crew at Metalab? If not, you should examine
these documents, which describe a methodology for "resource
discovery". We, too (SGI) are incorporating a paradigm such
as this in the Linux documentation and products we are currently
preparing for release:

  Debian Metadata Project
  http://www.debian.org/~aph/debian-metadata.html/

  Version 1.0 LDP CORE Specification
  http://metalab.unc.edu/osrt/ldpcore/ldp_elements

  Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
  http://purl.org/dc/documents/rec-dces-199809.htm

Any such system should work with some sort of convention as
described by these projects. The Open Ebook standard 1.0 also
enables such a capability in it's system.

> 10) I haven't ever seen SGI's bookshelf thingy or heard anything
> about it. Maybe you could take a few screenshots for those like
> me who have no access to SGI/Irix??  Maybe after I see it I'll sing
> a different tune.

Although a version of the system we provide does indeed scale
down to a local system, our "main" site can be accessed with
any old web browser from:

   htp://techpubs.sgi.com

You can home to our Linux collection of documents from this URL:

   http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/init.cgi?coll=linux

> 15) I think overall this is a great idea.  I've thought about this for
> sometime myself, but have been too distracted in trying to get the LKBP
> out the door in at least an alpha state that I haven't had the time to
be
> an ambassador to create the interest in something of this magnitude.
> Kinda the "If you build it they will come." mentality.  I'm more than
> happy to jump on the bandwagon though.

As am I! I think a new, neutral project is probably the appropriate
way to approach this. I'm ready and willing to contribute in any way
necessary. I basically worked on the design and code for SGI's
aforementioned implementation, including the search engine/etc.

best regards,



-- 
Greg Ferguson     - s/w engr / mtlhd         | gferg@sgi.com
SGI Tech Pubs     - http://techpubs.sgi.com  | 410-785-2334 
Linux Doc Project - http://www.linuxdoc.org  |