Re: [Tracker] Semantic Desktop for Gnome

[Ivan Frade <ivan frade gmail com>]

Hi Anatoly,

On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 11:56 AM, אנטולי קרסנר <tombackton gmail com> wrote:

Hi Ivan,
[...]
In the process of examining existing task-management apps, I discovered
that - not surprising at all - they have lots of things in common. The
arrangement of the data may vary, but the details - start date, due
date, tags, priority, assigned people, related mail/notes/source
code/references/bibliography, it's common to many apps.

So what I'm asking is: Is there an ontology for tasks? I didn't fully
dive into RDF and Tracker ontologies yet, but I saw ontologies for music
tags, for mail, for files, for contacts, for documents, etc.

 There is no specific ontology for tasks, although "To do" items are part of the calendar ontology (scal).

https://developer.gnome.org/ontology/unstable/scal-ontology.html#scal-Todo

I didn't see a special ontology for tasks on the list. Does it mean I
need to write my own XML/RDF format for semantic storage of tasks?

 Best option is to take a look to the scal shipped with Tracker and contribute some improvements to it. We can review and help.

 If the changes are big enough, you could also start a new ontology for Tasks. Read carefully NIE and NAO (at least) because much of what you need is there. You just need to create the right subclasses (and some extra properties).

 The ontologies are in the turtle format, and all the information for applications comes and goes in SparQL. Both are easy to learn (although Sparql queries can grow quickly). There is no XML involved.

 

I already store tasks in XML with clear rules (XSD schema is
work-in-progress), so it shouldn't be difficult, but I definitely need a
format. Not just for myself, but also because many task apps exist: Even
mail/groupware software such as Evolution and Thunderbird have tasks,
and I think there should be a unified format for storing them in a
semantic database. An ontology, I guess.

Sure. If scal is not good, you could translate your XSD into an ontology. Take a look to any of our ontologies for inspiration:

 https://git.gnome.org/browse/tracker/tree/data/ontologies/36-scal.ontology

Dont hesitate to ask. Writing ontologies is not something developers should do, but the Task part hasnt been exercised.

 

I'd like to thank you again for your help!

Thanks for your interest,

Best regards,

Ivan