x-urn:aaronstraupcope:wondering:whois:on#first

Since I've finally managed to get jpegrdf working I've been farting around adding different kinds of locative data in the absence of, and notwithstanding, automagic GPS goodness.

The following examples are the results of some experiments that may change but seem to hit pretty close to my personal 80/20 mark (where being able to read and write, not to mention query, this stuff quickly is of premium importance.)

Given the following namespaces :

@prefix :      <#> .
@prefix dc:    <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title> .
@prefix where: <x-urn:aaronstraupcope:knows:where#> .
@prefix rue:   <x-urn:aaronstraupcope:knows:where:qc-montreal:rue#> .
@prefix blvd:  <x-urn:aaronstraupcope:knows:where:qc-montreal:boulevard#> .
@prefix ruelle: <x-urn:aaronstraupcope:knows:where:qc-montreal:ruelle#> .
       

This picture gets assigned the following data, which is pretty straghtforward :

<20040424-qc-montreal-terres_urbaines.jpg>
      dc:title    "Terres Urbaines" ;
      dc:coverage where:qc-montreal ;
      where:site  rue:marquette ;
      where:near  blvd:du-mont-royal .
      

This one is pretty much the same as the last one but the near property is replaced by corner . Is this sign really on the corner? No — not enough to satisfy our new robot overlords , anyway. But seriously it's not like this data is for dropping bombs on people . If either one of us was trying to give the other directions — stop, stop now, and don't tell me you're going to beam me GPS coordinates unless you want to get slapped; you know who you are — we would fudge them the same way and be no worse for it.

<20040424-qc-montreal-runs_buses.jpg>
      dc:title     "Runs with Buses" ;
      dc:coverage  where:qc-montreal ;
      where:site   blvd:du-mont-royal ;
      where:corner rue:berri .
       

On the other hand, the picture associated with this post depicts something that really is on a corner :

<20040424-qc-montreal-god_juggling_donuts.jpg>
      dc:title     "The God of Juggling Donuts" ;
      dc:coverage  where:qc-montreal ;
      where:site   ruelle:unknown ;
      where:corner ruelle:unknown ;
      where:near   blvd:du-mont-royal ,
                   rue:drolet .
       

Now that we've given the pot smokers in the audience a few moments to giggle and nod knowingly to each other I will note that without creating a magic RDF Bag of Holding it's not possible to indicate that the two corners are the same : unknown, except relative to some other street. So, you fudge it again and assign an unknown site and an unknown corner on the grounds that, given the way the graph gets built, you can still find what you're looking for.

There are site s which are nice and vague and have a higher precedence than a corner which has hight precedence than something that is near . Streets, avenues, and such are all assumed to live in a namespace specific to their locality because anything else starts to smack of a grand unifying theory and who really has the time?

I suppose it would be useful to extend properties like near to add some sort of spacial element like, say, -e for East. But let me just point out that in Montréal East means anything on one side of the Main and South means anything towards, and beyond, the old city. Neither of which are true statements since both are off by about forty-five degrees. No one in Montréal cares.