LPF group topics

[Karl G]

Since v1 of Linked Places format (LPF) was first published in 2019, several changes have been made -- largely by me (@KarlGrossner) on behalf of World Historical Gazetteer (WHG) requirements. This has impacted some early adopters, who have to then adjust any conversion or validation scripts they have, and is not at all ideal.

The formation of this group is intended to bring adopters and other interested folks into conversation about potential changes to the specification, and about software tools that could make LPF more useful and usable.

To get things started, the following are some (most? all?) of the open questions raised by me and others in recent months. If you know of others please respond to this message. They could become separate discussion threads in this list, and/or in LPF Github repo issues. A group decision about the best forum for this seems like a good first order of business, so I'll start a thread on that.

• What is the right forum for discussion of LPF -- this Google group? GitHub issues? GitHub discussions?
• What are the funding possibilities that could support taking action on some or all of what follows?
  • @ArnoBosse has analyzed a current Horizon CFP noted by @EltonBarker; is there a way forward? Are there other possibilities?
• The LPF JSON-LD @context and its formalization
  • Does the context really need to be backed by an RDFS or OWL ontology? What is sufficient? Is SHACL relevant? Interesting recent related posts
    • The-difference-between-schema-org-and-owl/
    • syntax-semantics-great-owl-hoax
• Validation tools
  • A SHACL shape graph is in development (@RyanShaw); a JsonSchema schema file is in use for WHG--is it useful or adequate for other implementations? Would a generic command-line validator be useful?
• Conversion tools. Command line tools, and/or web interfaces for converting between LPF and other formats.
  • RDF (i.e. XML or Turtle syntaxes in addition to the current JSON-LD)
  • CIDOC-CRM mappings
  • Web-based tool that reads in an uploaded geodata file and allows/proposes/performs mappings to LPF
• The "when" specification
  • Should it be expanded or altered, e.g. to account for certainty or confidence, possibly with EDTF operators?
  • Should there be alternative simpler options for timespan description?
• The "geoms" spacification
  • Is the question of single geometry vs. GeometryCollectionclear in the spec?
• LP-TSV. This is currently a WHG-supported format. Should it be included in these discussions?