Re: OReilly summit

[Paul Jones <pjones@metalab.unc.edu>]

Dan and others, 
I cannot be at the Open Source Conference, but we do have a project that I
think will help bring the documentation together the Open Source Metadata
Framework (aka OMF) http://metalab.unc.edu/osrt/omf/
The idea here is to provide easily sharable, standards based,
interoperable metadata which is simple enough for authors to create
themselves without requiring them to be metadata specialists.
metadata can be independent of the document location, format, language
etc. think distributable card catalogue here. while it could be placed in
a database, it needs to be made transparent to be shared properly. we
believe that the OMF can be used to meet these and other requirements that
you mention in your note. we have a test set of documents (about 170
thanks to greg ferg) so that you can see one implementation of searching
and retrieval, but any site could create other versions from the same
shared standards based metadata.

On Mon, 3 Jul 2000, Dan York wrote:

> Guylhem,
> 
> > In 2 weeks I will participate to the OReilly summit, for the free
> > software documentation, which will focus on what OR can do to help the
> > free software documentation.
> 
> I will also be there and it would be interesting to connect and say hello.
> As usual, I will be representing the Linux Professional Institute and
> giving a presentation about "Understanding Linux Training and Certification
> Opportunities" on July 20th.  LPI will also have a booth in their ".org"
> area.  You can probably find me there - or reach me via my mobile (below).
> 
> > I intend to discuss for ex. the documentation formats, databases/search
> > engines, licenses issues, funding of free documentation projects,
> > transfert of commercial documents to free documentation ; I will also
> > present every single opinion from the LDP contributors, and post a sum
> > up after the summit.
> 
> IMHO, all of the above seem to be important issues.  I think standardizing
> the format of Linux/open source/free documentation is probably among the
> most important.  Let's make it easy for documentation from the various
> projects to be exchanged. 
> 
> A second concern is making it easy (or easier) for people to *find* all
> of the free documentation. Someone somewhere should have a "meta-directory"
> that would allow people to search the docs from LDP, OSWG, FreeBSD and any
> other sources of free documentation... including the books publishers open
> up under assorted "open" licenses.  Maybe such a project is already underway
> and I just don't know about it. (If so, please clue me in.) But it seems
> that this is necessary.  If documents can't all be in one central place (like
> the
> LDP), then I think there should be some place where people can search *all*
> the various repositories of documentation.  Something like Google that 
> can continuously update its own index.
> 
> And of course, there's always the need to have more people write... :-)
> 
> If I think of anything else, I'll pass it along... and I'll look forward
> to seeing your panel at the O'Reilly conference.
> 
> Regards,
> Dan
> 
> P.S. FWIW, I personally do not believe *all* Linux/opensource/free
> documentation
> needs to reside in a single place... Linux is all about choice and we need 
> to leave it open that other sites/projects can be set up... (while encouraging
> people to join with existing efforts first before doing their own thing).
> 
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Dan York, President, Board of Directors  dan@lpi.org
> Linux Professional Institute   http://www.lpi.org/
> 1-603-264-0129 mobile, 603-268-0691 tel, 603-268-0103 fax
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> --  
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
> 
> 

==========================================================================
                             Paul Jones
   "We must protect our precious bodily fluids!" General Jack D Ripper
http://MetaLab.unc.edu/pjones/ at the Site Formerly Known As SunSITE.unc.edu
  pjones@MetaLab.unc.edu   voice: (919) 962-7600     fax: (919) 962-8071 
===========================================================================


--  
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org