“Nepomuk-KDE is the basis for the semantic technologies we will see in KDE 4. Sebastian Trug, the main developer behind Nepomuk-KDE, provided me with some up to date information about the current state and future plans. The Semantic Desktop describes the idea where users will not only be able to search existing information, but also to search for the meaning and relation of these information. The Nepomuk project creates open standards and APIs around this idea. Nepomuk-KDE is the implementation of these standards for KDE.”
Thatsalotofbuzzwords.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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)
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.
Have MS mentioned anything about semantics in their WinFS talk or just putting metadata (and data?) in relational DBs?
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/WinFS
Edited 2007-06-01 11:00
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