Nepomuk in Mandriva 2010 Release Candidate 1.0

Nepomuk in Mandriva 2010 Release Candidate 1.0

Mandriva 2010 RC1 includes several new Nepomuk related services and user interfaces. It introduces in particular a new way to deal with tasks at the desktop level, transversaly between applications. Nepomuk can be activated/deactivated through the KDE System Settings, hitting the Desktop search icon. Once Nepomuk is activated, it first loads the ontologies into the user's metadata database. Some of the features below require the installation of the nepomuk-scribo package.

Features

Desktop tags: a transversal view of your data

• Files can be tagged and rated from Dolphin: this lets you get a transversal semantic view of your files, in addition to the classical folder view
• Resources can be searched by tag, by hitting Ctrl+L in Dolphin and by typing the keyword  nepomuksearch:/  followed by one or several entries tag:xxx in the Dolphin address bar. Example: nepomuksearch:/tag:semanticweb. The query can include several tags, as follow: nepomuksearch:/tag:semanticweb tag:project.
• Nepomuk search queries can be added to the Dolphin Places panel by hitting the entry Add to places in the Dolphin main panel
• Tags can be applied to a set of files at once
• Metadata follow files when moving them around from any KDE application

Displaying all resources - files, Web pages, contacts -  tagged with the tag 'semanticweb' in Dolphin

Displaying all files tagged with the tags 'project' and 'semanticweb' in Dolphin

Improved virtual folders

Virtual folders are folders whose contents are the results of a semantic query, for example: a folder containing all resources (files, Web pages, contacts, emails, etc.) tagged with "semanticweb" or "p2p". To create such a folder, enter the following query in the Dolphin's address bar. 

Displaying all resources tagged with the tag 'semanticweb' or the tag 'p2p' in Dolphin

More on this functionality can be read from Adam Kidder's and Trueg's blogs. 

Task oriented desktop

Task oriented desktop features relate to the ability to manage tasks transversaly between applications. 

Task context widget

Mandriva 2010 includes a plasmoid widget called Task switcher which makes it easy to create tasks and to select a current task meant to ease the linking of resources to a specific active task. The task switcher lets you see all your active tasks and choose one of them as the current task.

Task widget for creating new tasks and for setting the desktop's context

Task manager application

The Mandriva task manager is a general application for managing all resources that relate to tasks, i.e. for now files, contacts, emails, Web pages. The Mandriva task manager allows the creation/deletion of tasks and the linking of resources to tasks. In the illustration below, the task related to the organization of the Semantic Desktop Conference at the Open World Forum is selected in the task tree of the left panel; on the right panel, all resources linked to that task are showing up: contacts (speakers and organizers), files and Web pages related to the event. Actions can be launched from the context menu associated to each item. For instance, an email can be sent to all contacts linked to the selected task.

Example of resources linked to the OWF 2009 Semantic Desktop Conference task: files, contacts, Web pages, and emails soon

Task browsing integration into Dolphin

Typing  nepomuktree:/  in the Dolphin address bar displays all the tasks and their subtasks, and makes it possible to navigate across the task contents.

Browsing tasks from Dolphin

Browsing the items related to the task "OWF 2009 Semantic Desktop Conference" from Dolphin (same resources as above, in the task manager)

Konqueror task plugin

A task button is available from Konqueror for letting you link quickly a Web page to a task. 

Linking a Web page to a specific task directly from Konqueror

The Web page then shows up as being linked to the selected task in the task manager and in Dolphin.

Nepomuk shell

The Nepomuk shell is an application dedicated to the visual management of semantic resources. It can be launched from the command line by typing nepomukshell.

The Nepomuk shell lets you manage all the Nepomuk resources and to annotate them further

Semantic browsing via Konqueror

Hitting the hyperlink present at the top of the Nepomuk annotation dialog (introduced below) opens the selected resource in Konqueror (if defined as the default browser) and makes it possible to navigate across the resource relations by hypertext.

In addition to the Nepomuk shell, Konqueror can be used as a semantic browser for navigating your network of personal resources via hyperlinks

Advanced manual annotations

From Dolphin, right clicking on a file or a Nepomuk resource (such as a file) and selecting the entry "Action > Annotate" makes it possible to annotate a resource. Example: assume you have defined a contact "John Smith" from the task manager, typing "John" in the annotation field will propose to link the selected file with the statement "is related to John Smith"

Automatic suggestion of annotations

Nepomuk integrates Scribo NLP technologies for automatic recognition of named entities in text. Right click on a text file, and select "Actions > Run semantic analysis" for launching the recognition.

Scribo proposes a set of annotations meant to assist you in classifying your data quickly and efficiently

Recognition of text in images

Nepomuk can recognize text in images: click "Actions > Annotate". Nepomuk detects the text present in the image, and suggests to draw links between the image and other entities whose name is close to the text found.

Nepomuk services information

Activating Nepomuk launches the following services, which can be listed by running the command qdbus | grep nepomuk:

Note: it takes approximately 2 minutes on a modern desktop for now (optimization is being worked on). In parallel, the Strigi search engine crawls the user directories for indexing their data.

Documentation and support

We welcome all questions, tests and bug reports about Nepomuk. Here is below some information about existing sites and communication channels.

• Integration of Nepomuk into Mandriva:
  • Mandriva Cooker mailing-list
  • Mandriva Bugzilla
• General discussions on Nepomuk:
  • Nepomuk-KDE mailing-list
  • Nepomuk IRC: FreeNode #nepomuk-kde
  • Nepomuk KDE bugzilla, product: nepomuk
• Nepomuk home page for users and developers: http://nepomuk.kde.org