RDF stuff in the UI (was: Re: Early file format design)

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

On 30 August 2012 21:48, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau <kossebau at kde.org> wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 30. August 2012, 20:44:12 schrieb Inge Wallin:
>> On Thursday, August 30, 2012 16:20:01 Jos van den Oever wrote:
>> > On 08/29/2012 11:10 PM, Inge Wallin wrote:
>> > > This mail is about designing a new file format. It will be relevant to
>> > > Calligra Author and possibly also for Calligra Words if Boemann wants
>> > > it.
>> > >
>> > > Everybody who is not interested in file formats can skip this thread.
>> >
>> > I'm going to throw a potential solution out there and see if it sticks.
>> >
>> > The solution: use ODT with RDF for anything that is missing from ODT.
>> > I'll describe the details as they come up.
>>
>> Ok, so I have read this mail several times and I realise that I don't
>> understand the implications of choosing this alternative.
>>
>> I have several times heard the RDF parts of Calligra described as
>> "complicated" and "immature" (paraphrased) so I didn't thinkof it as an
>> alternative.
>
> I guess those comments are about what is exposed in the UI. And I would agree
> that the current state is not really user friendly, too much technical
> stuff/terms IMHO, more like experimental engineers' controls, which better are
> hidden in official releases for now, I think.
>
> Ben, you are the driving force here, right? What are the usecases/workflows
> you are thinking of where the things you are implementing will be useful?
>
> E.g. http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Rdf is pretty empty :) Could you dump
> your ideas and plans there? Perhaps also link to all your related blog posts,
> like http://monkeyiq.blogspot.de/2011/07/calligra-rdf-smaak.html
>
> In general I think there is lot of potential in storing more information using
> RDF :) But that RDF is used is just a technical detail and should be hidden in
> the main UI, instead the usecases (special actions on the objects, special
> editors for the data, e.g. a location, searching on the objects, etc.) should
> have their comfort zone counterparts in the UI.
> The UI to see/talk directly to the internal RDF data storage, like in the
> "Document Information" dialog, would be only shown on demand, as it is
> confusing the normal user (and thus making him feel dumb, not good :) ).

+1 IMHO. From UX point of view, for me exposing RDF by default (as
opposed to offering _optional_ plugin for true power users) is like
directly exposing EXT3/EXT4 (and differences between them) in Dolphin
UI.
What I'm trying to say is: technologies of these lower layers should
not influence use cases, but the other way round...

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
 Kexi & Calligra & KDE | http://calligra.org/kexi | http://kde.org
 Qt Certified Specialist | http://qt-project.org
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstaniek