http://www.osnews.com/story/18006/Semantic_Desktop_State_Plans_of_Nepomuk-KDE Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:31:39 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?244479 http://osnews.com/thread?244479 Thatsalotofbuzzwords. Thu, 31 May 2007 21:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kev009) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244482 http://osnews.com/thread?244482 Cool stuff. I like the way this stuff is going, and integrating it certainly seems to make sense... That said, I really hope that other DE's step up and also interact with the Nepomuk interface so that things can work well together.

Also, a way of converting Nepomuk metadata to/from the formats of other apps that don't understand Nepomuk itself would also be cool. It'd be nice not to be locked in, even though I probably wouldn't mind it in this instance! Thu, 31 May 2007 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mark Williamson) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244514 http://osnews.com/thread?244514 It's not that complicated. Applications and users record contextual information about files and how they relate to each other. An indexer gathers lexical information from file contents. Applications and users can query this information in various ways to identify relevant files.

This approach differs from others, like Beagle, in that it integrates the contextual part. In addition to allowing the user to make sense of their data so that they can locate stuff later, it allows applications to make sense of the data they create and process in a much more useful manner. Applications that share data can benefit from information contributed by other applications without any complicated interfaces.

Think of it this way: DBUS allows applications to communicate synchronously through message passing. Nepomuk allows applications to communicate asynchronously through file metadata. The goal is to integrate applications as much as it is to help the user find their data.

Tight integration through convenient interfaces is the "killer app" that will allow free software desktops to accomplish what proprietary desktops don't (not that they can't). Developers are excited about these capabilities because they make it easy to develop powerful applications. Users are excited because integration is a key part of that "just works" experience. Thu, 31 May 2007 23:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244534 http://osnews.com/thread?244534 Those interested in a cross-desktop, generalized metadata service should take a look at Xesam. Hopefully Xesam will silence a lot of the (valid) concerns that it will be impossible for any apps to target all the metadata indexers popping up everywhere. To the best of my knowledge, Tracker, Strigi, Beagle and Nepomuk devs are all participating.

I even think that Tracker might export a draft Xesam API in the next release (0.6).

My only fear is that the Xesam project stands a high chance of suffering "death by committee". Progress appears to have been pretty slow in hammering out a draft spec. Hopefully this just means they're putting a lot of thought into things, though. Fri, 01 Jun 2007 01:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (monodeldiablo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244564 http://osnews.com/thread?244564 I think that Dolphin will seriously kick asses! Easy interface, nepomuk and strigi integration, cosmetic enhancements (I think about the "selection" developed by Rafael Fernandez Lopez) etc.

Great work! Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vide) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244569 http://osnews.com/thread?244569 Btw, now we will see if Gnome will suffer from NIH syndrome or will implement a frontend implementation to nepomuk (which is, of course, desktop-agnostic) Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vide) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244573 http://osnews.com/thread?244573 Hmmm ... as far as i understand there is already collaboration between BEAGLE and the NEPOMUK project on some level (BEAGLE++), not sure however how in-depths etc. (http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/News/) this is ... Anyway very exciting to see Nepomuk tightly integrated into KDE4, this will make KDE 4.xx (once all the other applications make use of it) deliver what VISTA has promised but never delivered. Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (searly) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244574 http://osnews.com/thread?244574 Have MS mentioned anything about semantics in their WinFS talk or just putting metadata (and data?) in relational DBs? Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dsmogor) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?244575 http://osnews.com/thread?244575 Well as far as i remember reading WinFS was supposed to store metadata and also store and extract relational meaningful information ... so yes i guess they did, but as we know never delivered. Does anybody know if MS is still working on it, or did they abandon it?

More here (not sure about the accuracy though): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFSEdited 2007-06-01 11:00 Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (searly) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?245117 http://osnews.com/thread?245117 For all those interested in the new desktop shell, here are some screencast about Plasma.

http://plasma.kde.org/media/plasma_formfactors_hi.ogg
http://plasma.kde.org/media/plasma_plasmoids_and_dataengines.ogg
http://plasma.kde.org/media/

This is still in early stages of development and is already looking awesome!Edited 2007-06-04 11:58 Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diego) Comments