Announcing Giblet
Giblet (Graph In-Browser Lightweight Editing Tool) allows the creation of simple RDF graphs, based on available RDF schemata. It runs as a Javascript application in an enabled browser.
This experimental release of Giblet is targetted at RDF savvy developers, although we will re-skin it with a less geeky look and feel for beginner tasks like FOAF or DOAP generation. There is a constant tension here between power and simplicity.
Giblet offers the following basic features:
- Class selection and resource creation
- Appropriate property selection, based on the domain of the class and its super-classes
- Appropriate value input, whether as a string literal or an internal resource reference (based on the range of the property)
- Saving and loading of simple graphs to and from local storage, via cookies
- Export of graphs as RDF/XML, and a submission to the W3C's online image generator for RDF graphs
- Availability of templates (initially FOAFNet only) to help a user get started
Giblet is initialised by a model described in Javascript. This is generated from various RDF schema by XSLT, although we will use Semantic Planet's CARP library in future. Giblet has been tested in FireFox preview release 1 and Internet Explorer 6 only. If you use it with another browser, please let us know.
Future plans for Giblet, including the dynamic loading of schemata, can be found on the Giblet wiki page.
We'd love Giblet to get used. If it does not do exactly what you need, or you feel it could be improved, please let me know by e-mailing me at james dot carlyle at semanticplanet.com.
9 Comments
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Very nice. Should be very useful.
I did find it confusing at first, not altogether obvious what was going on, though after a few minutes started getting the hang of it.
I'm not sure, something like a continuously updated NTriples or even a tree rendition of what had already been entered and where you are might be helpful.
No obvious bugs after about 10mins in Firefox 1.0 PR on Win2k.
Don't think I've seen a "Save to Cookie" button before…
What busy bees. Keep up the good work.
Comment by Danny — 21 Oct 2004 @ 11:10 am
PS. there may be something useful in the DOM twangling here:
http://semtext.org/2004-02/slides/w6.html
(seems a bit broken in latest FF, should be ok in IE6)
Comment by Danny — 21 Oct 2004 @ 11:16 am
PS. there may be something usable around the DOM-twangling here:
http://semtext.org/2004-02/slides/w6.html
(seems broken in latest FF, should be ok in IE6)
Comment by Danny — 21 Oct 2004 @ 11:19 am
Um, where is it? I don't see any link in the story.
Comment by Dave Beckett — 22 Oct 2004 @ 10:51 am
Danny,
Thanks for your feedback. I've added a line or two to get people started, but clearly need to think about how to make it more user-friendly. We knew that for this to be presented as a FOAF or DOAP (or W6!) editor we would have to think about labelling, help text etc. a great deal.
We could add an n-triples view next to the RDF/XML view with no problems - this would be continually updated and the user could toggle this on or off. I don't really want to introduce a tree view, because this is a graph and there is no notion of tree root, unless we ask the user to specify one of the resources as being the root. Even then they might pick a resource that did not link to all the other resources - in fact the tool could be used to create several trees.
Comment by James Carlyle — 22 Oct 2004 @ 11:14 am
Dave,
Errr - you're right. The original posting should have had a link to launch it, instead of being hidden in the Wiki page. Sorry. I've fixed the posting.
Comment by James Carlyle — 22 Oct 2004 @ 11:17 am
Danny
I really like the W6 garland approach and was thinking of putting the required classes and properties in a config file to allow Giblet to be used to create and edit W6 garlands or chains of garlands, and having a "sample W6" button alongside the "minimal FOAFnet" button. Let me know if I can do this.
Comment by James Carlyle — 22 Oct 2004 @ 1:03 pm
James - sorry, I think I was going to respond and then got distracted…
Yep, please do what you can with W6. I'm open to suggestions for modifications too, if there's anything that don't look right.
I'd be grateful if you could post a note somewhere about where the code does its pre-loading of classes/properties, I fancy trying it with a project vocab.
Comment by Danny — 28 Oct 2004 @ 9:07 pm
Danny
Sorry for not getting on with W6. I have been busy with a database backend for Carp (see other email) and have some clear ideas for Giblet, not implemented yet, and somewhat contradictory. One is to allow the dynamic loading of RDFS schemas, looking at how some schemas depend on others. Another is thinking about how an absolute beginner would like to generate RDF statements. I suppose that a beginner-friendly skin would wrap everthing else under the covers, but might still use a dynamic schema loading facility without the user ever being aware.
I could post a note about how the current preloading works, but would prefer to work on the dynamic loading ability and then write about that. I'll have a much better idea after thinking about it over the weekend, if you can wait till Monday.
James
Comment by James Carlyle — 29 Oct 2004 @ 10:59 am