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Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Organic Growth of Knowledge


Eric Armstrong wrote:    (01)

> Murray Altheim wrote:
> 
>>Malcolm Dean wrote:
>>>InfoSelect is marketed as a super-PIM,...
>>>
>>Heh. I find it curious you said you didn't see my project as having
>>any great use, yet you acknowledge what seems like extensive use of
>>a PIM that likely does much the same thing as my application.
> 
> I am no doubt guilty of overlooking your application, as well.
> I plead ignorance brought on by overload.
> 
> What does your application do, again?    (02)


Well, you could hardly be guilty as it's not yet available and
there's precious little documentation either. I'll certainly
be announcing it far and wide as it matures. Only the stout
of stomach would want a copy just yet.    (03)

Ceryle is an open source Java-based application under Apache-
style license. It's designed to assist authors in the
organization of research materials, targeted at authors of both
fiction and non-fiction. My particular interest is historical
fiction, so it will at least serve my needs (we are sometimes
selfish beasts). It includes editing facilities, a database,
a graph visualization feature, as well as image mapping (so
that a position or area on an image can become the queryable
subject. Think: locations on maps as subjects.    (04)

In a nutshell, technologically-speaking, Ceryle uses a Xindice
native XML database to store all content. This includes a base
authoring ontology (which can be modified by an author) which
is used to categorize individual nodes of content. These nodes
are stored in Xindice Collections, such that the author can
create collections named as according to their own ideas of
categories. The nodes in the authoring ontology are visualized
in a TouchGraph graph display, so that the node contents can
be located by browsing the graph or via search, the search
allowing for some level of graph traversal (so that a search
on "Matterhorn" would also return "fuzzy" connections to other
categories' nodes by virtue of their distance from the search
category, graph-wise).    (05)

It's in some ways like InfoSelect except for the ontology-based
approach. Given that the ontology and the population of the
database is done by the author, there shouldn't be too difficult
a disconnect between the ontology and the author's thinking.    (06)

Murray    (07)

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK    (08)

      If it wants to be a global power and a player in the
      Atlantic alliance, Europe has to get back into the
      business of making war. -- Newsweek Magazine, June 3, 2002    (09)