Data exchange with SignPuddle Markup Language

Sat May 29 16:22:12 UTC 2010


On 28/05/2010 7:45 AM, Steve Slevinski wrote:
> On May 27, 2010, at 6:24 PM, Jonathan y Yolaine wrote:
>
>> > > Hi Steve,
>> >     I like how you made the item generic both for  BSW and for 
>> other languages.  It makes for a flexible structure that would even 
>> support sign languages back to back.!!!   Also this way it would 
>> support unlimited terms or glosses for each entry.
>
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> I'm glad you like SPML.  I still to make a few tweaks, but I like it 
> too.  One thing I really like is the ability to go from markup to 
> database.  I created an SPML to SQL script.  Next I'll need to reverse 
> it so I can go from SQL to SPML.  You can see both the SPML and the 
> SQL for the English/ASL User Interface:
> http://signbank.org/signpuddle2/data/ui/1.spml
> http://signbank.org/signpuddle2/data/ui/1.sql
That's really cool.  I am investigating ORM for database to Object.  
Then I can easily go from Object to XML and vice versa.
I loaded 1.sql into MSSQL but it didn't run, has many errors. But I 
image it wasn't meant to run on MSSQL anyways so that's ok.  What flaver 
of SQL are you using?
>
>> > >     Is SPML an exchange format just for the dictionaries or also 
>> for the literature?
> The SPML exchange format will be used for both.  The <entry> element 
> can have 3 literature oriented attributes: top, previous, and next.  
> These provide the linking between entries and will be used for 
> literature with multiple pages.  Eventually, the markup will probably 
> need to be customized to differentiate dictionaries from literature.
>
>> > > There are 5 things that I would like to suggest.
>> > 1. Add a Global unique ID (GUID) for each entry so that it will be 
>> easy to compare whether we are exchanging an entry that we already 
>> had.  The "entry id" good for the SignPuddle database, other programs 
>> may not have the same id in their database.  The GUID permits you to 
>> detect whether we are talking about the same entry or not.
> A global unique ID may be useful and can be constructed right now.  
> There are 2 main types of puddles: ui and sgn.  Each puddle has a 
> unique ID.  So entry 7 is the user interface puddle number 1 would 
> have the unique ID of "ui.1.7".  I need to add the puddle type and id 
> as attributes to the <spml> tag.
I don't think you understood what I meant.  Let be explain some more. 
When someone has a Personal sign Puddle, their "Not-so-unique" id for 
entry 7 in user interface puddle number 1 will be "ui.1.7" and probably 
won't even be the same thing.  Rather a GUID is unique per entry 
throughout all the records in all the tables of all the databases of the 
world.  The the same problem would occur for other programs wanting to 
export data to SignPuddle using SPML.  For more info see. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guid
>
>> > 2. Add a time stamp to each entry, so that we can compare to of the 
>> same signs and help decided if we should update the one we have, or 
>> not change anything if the sign is older or the same as the one we 
>> already have.
> This is already there.  Entries and items have 2 dates: CDT (created), 
> and MDT (modified).  Unix time stamps are used.
>
> <entry e_id="2" cdt="1172438830" mdt="1173731285">
> <item i_id="3" lang="ase" cdt="1172438830" mdt="1173731285">
> <term t_id="3" 
> index="29e062e062e070c0ed40">0080ed46f9caf9bb29f0f9e1f9e062e0f9c4f9ea62e0f9d4f9fb70c1f9d0f9d9</term> 
>
> </item>
> <item i_id="4" lang="en" cdt="1172438830" mdt="1173731285">
> <term t_id="4"><![CDATA[User Interface]]></term>
> <text><![CDATA[Contains the text used for the display.]]></text>
> </item>
> </entry>
>
I never used Unix Time stamps but I found a piece of code to convert 
from Time objects to Unix Timestamps and back and forth so it shouldn't 
be a problem.

>> > 3. Add an identifier to the item tag to specify whether it is a BSW 
>> string or other foreign string.  Of course you could always use the 
>> an algorithm to determine this but when you have a really long list 
>> it is much faster to read the value that to decided which it is for 
>> each one. 
> Interesting idea.  I'm still mulling this over.
>
>> > 4. It seems to me that the "src" tag should belong to the entry tag 
>> and not to the item tag.  It is repeated many times.  You may have 
>> other reasons for this structure which may not be apparent to me at 
>> this time.
> There are 2 reasons to repeat the source.  First, one person can add 
> an ASL sign and another person could add the BSL.  Second, one person 
> could add an ASL sign and another person could add a different ASL sign.
Makes sense then to repeat the source.  I hadn't thought of it from that 
angle.

How do you plan on implementing the several sign languages all in one 
puddle????  As each puddle has it's own language? See about about id 
ui.7.1 in the SPML tag?
>
>
>> > 5. If you are only going to have one name tag inside the item tag 
>> and the item tag doesn't have any other children, then the name tag 
>> is redundant.  Though it might add to legibility. 
> Is it easier to be redundant with a simple definition without special 
> exceptions.  Also there can be multiple terms, but only one text.  
> Without the <term> or <text> identifier, we don't know which one we have.
I see that in the example above you don't have the name tag. Could you 
explain some more on the difference of the term tag and the text tag 
please??
>
>> > What do you have in mind for annotating the colors and sizes of the 
>> symbols. Would SPML be able to share information about color and size 
>> of the symbols from one program to another?
> No color or size information is contained in SPML.  Symbols within a 
> sign are always the same size.  Color and size should be controlled by 
> CSS, but that's a work in progress.
I would be a bit of a bummer not to be able to share colors or sizes of 
symbols between programs.  Especially if you want to send your document 
to another program to do the layout.
>
>> > > Here is a rough sample of my suggestions:
>> > > <entry id="29" guid="cc2e7faa-1d56-4b0c-a7ee-2d2b96241471" 
>> timestamp="2009-11-17T06:57:38.4375-06:00"> > <item lang="ase" 
>> type="bsw">00800112f9c4f9d6011af9abf9de6640f9c6f9e570c4f9c6f9f4</item> > 
>> <item lang="en" type="other">cannot</item> > <item lang="en" 
>> type="other">can't</item> > <src>Valerie Sutton</src> > </entry> > 
> Thanks for including an example.
>> > Thank you for all of your hard work on these standards.   They help 
>> bring the whole together.
>> > > Jonathan
>> > 
> Thanks for taking the time to consider and comment.

Looking forward to your comments

Jonathan
>
> Regards,
> -Steve
>
>

-- 

Jonathan Duncan
email: duncanjonathan at yahoo.ca <mailto:duncanjonathan at yahoo.ca>
joyoduncan at gmail.com <mailto:joyoduncan at gmail.com>
Cel: 9784-9775
Tel: 213-5285
Skype: yojoduncan
cobanma.ibs-cobanma.com <http://cobanma.ibs-cobanma.com>
SignWriter Studio <http://www.signwriterstudio.com/>

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