[tug-summer-of-code] Project ideas

[Peter Flynn]

Karl Berry wrote:
 > Hi Kittipat,
 >
 > You wrote:
 >
>> I'd like to participate in GSoC as a student. I saw the Dublin Core
>> idea on the GSoC idea list page and I'm quite interested. However,
>> there's a point in the key deliverables that I couldn't
>> understand. Specifically, what is the important of "methods for
>> package authors to declare new metadata element sets and
>> vocabularies"? It should be no problem if "an implementation of the
>> Dublin Core Abstract Model in TeX" has already been done, isn'tit?

As I understand this, it hinges on the word "new". Kittipat is quite 
right, if the DCAM is implemented in [La]TeX, then using it isn't the 
problem. It's when a new element set or vocabulary comes along that we 
need the ability to adapt to it without reinventing the wheel. The huge 
increase in usage of Z39.88 because of Zotero is one example.

There are lots of abstract models for metadata, from the relatively 
simple bibliographic level (eg BIBTeX) up to the humungously complex one 
in TEI (implemented for standalone metadata in EAD). I think the point 
is meant to be, we should be able to adapt as the demand and the usage 
changes, without having to rewrite everything.

I'm just back from the IUISC (www.iuisc.ie) and one of the perennial hot 
topics was the reuse of metadata. But with 100 librarians in a room, and 
you ask what model you should use, you get >100 answers :-)

YMMV

///Peter