Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] New Linux soundapp site progress
From: Paul Winkler (pw_lists_AT_slinkp.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 19:24:51 EEST
On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 03:58:30PM +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 06:33:20 -0800, Paul Winkler wrote:
> >
> > I'm not sure if I've made this clear:
> > we're not restricted to apps. being located in a single category.
> > It's not a strict tree
> > hierarchy, where each leaf is unique and can only be on one
> > branch. Instead, the categories are more like sets of the whole set
> > of apps. They can overlap.
> > The category tree is just a convenient way to find
> > your way around.
>
> [I'm afraid the knowledge engineer inside me is fighting to get out]
Engineer away. :)
> This is a taxonomy.
>
> Its certainly not a problem to apply more than one set of classes (t-box,
> aka ontology) to a set of instances (a-box, aka knowledge base).
>
> The key question is how you abstract the a-box from the t-box.
> I also
> dabble in SQL, so I'd do it in tables, but in an abstract form, the data
> structure would look like:
>
> t-box: (-> represents the hasSuperClass relation)
>
> Digital Audio -> Resource
> File Compression -> Digital Audio
> LADSPA Plugins -> Digital Audio
> ...
>
> a-box: (-> repersents the isInstanceOf relation)
>
> FLAC -> File Compression
> Ogg Vorbis -> File Compression
> Steve's Plugins -> LADSPA Plugins
> ...
>
> Shout if this doesn't make sense, or you want more information.
OK, this is a shout. :)
I'm not really sure what to ask, because I don't understand any
of your terminology except hasSuperClass and isInstanceOf.
The way I've been thinking about the site is, to me, very simple.
An app listing is just an entry in a large, disordered repository.
A category is just a list of other categories or of app listings.
Metaphorically, Think of categories as directories, and listings as files ...
except that the categories don't actually contain the files,
they contain the equivalent of hard links.
This is simple, but it does present some obvious problems:
e.g. how do you find out what categories a given entry belongs to?
Asking all the categories seems like unpleasant work,
and keeping a list of parent categories in the entry seems
error-prone. e.g. what if we change the name of a category,
or remove the category entirely? what if we remove the only
category that a certain entry was assigned to? Ugh.
Obviously there are large holes in my knowledge.
I assume these issues are old news. You can probably tell I'm no DBA. :)
--PW
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Mon Apr 08 2002 - 19:11:20 EEST