Re: tools and methods for mapping the commons of commons education
Jörg Richter
Dear Nagarjuna and others,
thank you Nagarjuna for providing information about your GNOWSYS project!
And thank you, Wouter, Jürgen and others for making the connection!
I would love to connect our projects in one way or another.
Let me introduce the DeepaMehta project here and start the discussion about a possible collaboration.
Philosophy:
The broad vision of DeepaMehta is to provide knowledge workers a cognitive adequate user interface and to support the process of building structures (ontologies) and content collaboratively. We think the current application-centered user interface has to be superseded by a user interface that is centered around the user's working contexts.
We believe that knowledge never exists in a machine, but only in heads. Creating knowledge is an individual process that is not accessible by mathematical methods.
We believe there is a canyon between formalized semantic and "living space semantic". Living space semantic is determinded by a situated cognitive being. This canyon is an constitutive element in the socio-technical system and can't be removed by technology.
We believe semantic technologies can provide a benefit to normal computer users if a fundamental re-conceptualisation of the user interface and real-world usage scenatios are part of this research.
We believe computers will benefit learning and collaborative work best when they are designed
as a supportive tool that leverages the user's cognitive capabilities (like visual intelligence) as well as hers social capabilities (like building shared structures of meaning).
Technical:
The DeepaMehta data model is inspired by both, Topic Maps and RDF.
As database we currently use the graph-based Neo4j. Though, the persistence layer is DB-agnostic.
Java-based application server with a REST interface.
The standard webclient is based on Javascript/AJAX and HTML 5 canvas.
Modularition is key. There is a framework for plugin developers. Plugins can 1) provide type definitions, 2) provide application logic (server-side Java), and 3) extend the GUI (client-side Javascript).
Each plugin is an OSGi bundle.
Usage:
Best way to start with DeepaMehta is a local installation (current stable release is DeepaMehta 3 v0.4.3). Installation is very easy: just unzip and start. Only requirements are Java and a modern web browser. Deinstallation is very easy as well: delete the DeepaMehta folder.
Start here:
https://github.com/jri/deepamehta3
(The online DeepaMehta sandbox installations mentioned by Jürgen are currently not up-to-date and not recommended).
Data transfer:
For the moment we have a "Topic Importer" tool (available via the "Special" menu) which allows to create topics (nodes) from a comma or tab separated text representation, possibly transformed on-the-fly via regex.
Currently we can't read/write XTM or RDF files. This will come in the future.
Documentation:
Documentation about DeepaMehta 3 is rather limited. DeepaMehta 3 is a rewrite of DeepaMehta 2 and still quite young. There is a Wiki with some technical documentation:
https://github.com/jri/deepamehta3/wiki
Connecting GNOWSYS and DeepaMehta:
Nagarjuna, I would love to connect our projects in one way or another. As you suggest the first task could be to import GNOWSYS data in DeepaMehta. Possibly GNOWSYS could benefit from DeepaMehta's interactive GUI and its working context approach. What kind of data do GNOWSYS export? Would online-access the GNOWSYS database from DeepaMehta an opportunity as well?
In case you or one of your team member is interested in such a project I would love to discuss possible solutions and to provide you with all the required information and functionality.
Discussion might take place on the DeepaMehta 3 Google Group as other DeepaMehta activists might like to participate.
http://groups.google.com/group/deepamehta3
Best wishes
Jörg Richter
On Nov 30, 2010, at 7:03, Nagarjuna G wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 6:11 PM, Wouter Tebbens <wou...@freeknowledge.eu> wrote:
>> Dear Nagarjuna,
>>
>> the other day Juergen Nuemann (we were both in the ICC in Berlin) told me
>> about DeepaMehta, a tool to design topic maps and ontological
>> representation. I understand that it is different from GNOWSYS, as you
>> auto-generate topic maps based on the relations between nodes, while
>> DeepaMehta facilitates the design process, AFAIK. It seemed however
>> interesting to put you in contact with each other. Maybe you already knew
>> each other, but just in case...
>>
>> Joerg Richter is the founder and developer of DeepaMehta.
>>
>> Maybe both projects could somehow complement each other, as it appears to me
>> that you work in a similar direction and both projects are free knowledge -
>> or Gnowledge, as you would say ;-)
>>
>
> Wouter, thanks for introducing the team that developed DeepaMehta!
>
> I met one Juergen Neumann in London in a WISFII meet in 2005, also
> from Berlin. Are you the same person?
>
> At some point last year I did come across DeepaMehta, downloaded and
> installed. Apart from that I couldn't get an entry into the system as
> yet. I still have the installation intact in my disk. I will take
> some time off and explore this when I find some time.
>
> Meanwhile I will study the architecture of the system and get back to
> you. Any pointers to a quick entry into the system will be welcome.
>
> Regarding GNOWSYS: gnowsys is a storage for semantic networks.
> currently we can export the network as rdf triples. We support any
> binary relations and attributes with datatypes supported Postgresql
> (since we use Postgresql for storage). We have developed
> gnowsys-mode (in Emacs) as a text based interface to remotely manage
> the networks. We are also developing a GTK based client called
> gnowser, and a web based interface for building the networks. This
> 10min video can give you some idea of our project.
> http://gnowledge.org/~nagarjun/CK2009-gnowsys-mode.ogg
>
> If I wish to push some of our data into DeepaMehta, how do I do? Does
> it support any standard data exchange? I am sorry to ask this
> question, you may have already answered this in your project
> documentation, which I haven't read.
>
> Thanks
> Nagarjuna