Re: [Fenfire-dev] RDF views in a web-server application

[Matti Katila]

On Wed, 10 May 2006, Damaris Fuentes wrote:
> Hi you all!
>
> I came across with your Fenfire project. I am delighted with the view
> of the RDF "boobles" like a real graph. I am right now in a web project
> with Ruby on Rails where, with basic HTML and javascript or AJAX I must
> do this kind of boobles. Anyone can give me any idea?

Hi Damaris,

Thanks for writing to us. First, I tried Merriam-Webster and Google to
find the word "boobles" but I failed. Hence, I'm not 100% sure what you
mean with your question but I try to answer as I have understood it.
Please, try again if you don't find my answer clear as crystal.

As I understand it, your goal is to generate web page which has some user
interaction and shows an RDF graph with nodes or "boobles". The basic
concept of this kind of general graph view is to show:
1) subjects, objects and literals as boxes with some content, e.g., a
   string or picture; and
2) predicates as connections between boxes, e.g., a colored line with
   predicate name.

There are some issues how literals are shown because of they lack of an
identity but it's just an implementation issue. If you want to use
animations while hopping from node to node we use a keys of node
identities to mark coordinating systems.

Well, I must admit that I don't know AJAX enought to give you much
information how the drawing mechanism is to be implemented. I would
suggest that you need to use css and fixed coordinates to draw the boxes
for instance. I have seen this demo, http://demo.nextapp.com/Demo/app
and I was very impressed. What I would like to have is a graphics API port
of Libvob - our visualization library - to AJAX. That would be something
very cool.

Anyway, I hope you get some points to ask more specified questions :-)


   -Matti