Simon Willison's Weblog: xfml

XFML

2007-08-30T22:27:49+00:00

Throwing the new home for the XFML specification some Google juice; the domain name got nabbed by a squatter.

Tags: google, information-architecture, peter-van-dijck, xfml

Mark goes XFML

2002-12-05T01:22:06+00:00

Mark Pilgrim has discovered XFML. He provides an excellent description of the standard, but fails to mention XFML's most powerful ability; sharing metadata. Here's how it works:

You find another site with similar topics to you that publishes their data in XFML.
You set up your XFML software (for the moment you'll have to write your own, but this will change soon) to grab their map once per specified-time-period.
In your XFML map, you use the connect element to link topics on your map to identical / very similar topics on their map. For example, you might have a topic called "Cats" while they have one called "Felines". The meaning is the same, so create a link between them.
Whenever they publish something in that topic on their site, your software will be able to automatically link to it as "related reading" on your site.

This is just the tip of the iceberg - apply the creative global mindset that is the blogging community and who knows what will happen :) In the meantime, marvel at Dive Into Accessibility as rendered by FacetMap, working from the XFML document provided here. Dive Into Accessibility is a great example of faceted navigation and a perfect example of XFML in action.

Tags: mark-pilgrim, xfml

XFML for Radio

2002-11-28T23:31:25+00:00

Spotted on Guide to ease: Bill Kearney has written an XFML tool for Radio Userland. This sounds great - I'd love to see an example of a Radio blog that is using this.

Tags: xfml

Taxomita

2002-11-24T21:53:42+00:00

XFMLManager, Peter Van Dijck's XFML construction and navigation tool to which I have contributed various chunks of XML related code, has been renamed Taxomita and given a brand new site. Peter hopes to have a public beta out within the next few weeks. It also has a mailing list. Meanwhile, XFML has been cropping up all over the place even despite the current lack of software, with the most recent sighting occurring over at Bill Kearney's Syndication News.

Tags: peter-van-dijck, xfml

XFML 1.0 soon

2002-09-27T17:12:23+00:00

Peter Van Dijck: Future XFML news will be posted on the XFML.org site. XFML 1.0 will be with us soon.

Tags: peter-van-dijck, xfml

RDF is dead

2002-08-31T14:01:18+00:00

Peter provides an interesting perspective:

RDF is dead as a popular metadata format. If it was gonna happen, it would have already. Forget about it.

Peter goes on to say (in the comments attached to the entry) that RDF's biggest obstacle is the fact that it requires write-access - only the content owner can add meta data. External meta data implementations such as XTM and XFML are inherently more flexible.

Tags: peter-van-dijck, rdf, xfml

FacetMaps

2002-07-28T12:57:24+00:00

Yet another interesting take on XML metadata representations: FacetMaps. A facet map (as I understand it) is a way of combining facets with hierarchies, best explained by the excellent interactive three minute concept intro on the site. One of the main contrasts to XFML is that in a Facet Map Facets, rather than Topics, are the principle categorisation element. A resource in a Facet Map is linked directly to one or more facets, rather than going through a topic. The XML format is pretty simple (a lot simpler than XTM and XFML) so I might have a go at a PHP implementation at some point.

Tags: facets, xfml

Facets understood

2002-07-28T11:40:57+00:00

And suddenly I understand faceted metadata. Sometimes all you need for that final moment of insight is a good example, and Peter Van Djick's Columbia Guide Site Map is just what I needed. A facet is simply a "flat", mutually exclusive (at least as far as the XFML specification is concerned) way of categorising a topic - it can be described as a bottom-up method of categorisation rather than the more common hierarchical top-down approach (as seen on the ODP) which seeks to assign all topics as sub-topics of something else. Peter writes in XFML Background and Concepts that Faceted taxonomies are generally more powerful for websites than classic hierarchical taxonomies - this seems to make a great deal of sense, and it will be interesting to see this demonstrated by XFML in the near future.

Update: Incidentally, IAWiki have an excellent page describing FacetedClassification.

Tags: facets, peter-van-dijck, xfml

XFML

2002-06-20T01:04:49+00:00

XFML - eXchangable Faceted Metadata Language (via Guide to ease). Now this is interesting. It's an open XML format designed to facilitiate the publication and distribution of metadata - it uses a load of terms that are currently way over my head (hierarchical and faceted taxonomiest, topicmaps?) but the general principle looks fantastic. I wrote a metadata system last year that used a relational database and it was something of a nightmare - XFML looks like it solves some of the problems I faced, although my biggest challenge was how to grab and present usable information from the huge amounts of metadata collected which is a problem that falls outside the scope of XFML. XFML is best summarised by the following quote:

Say you run a weblog on a certain topic. You put your posts into categories you have invented yourself. A friend of your also runs a weblog on the same topic, and also puts their posts into categories they invented themselves. Many of these categories are really the same thing, but they are called something else. You both publish your metadata in XFML format. XFML allows you to relate these categories, so they still keep their own names, but your system knows they are really the same. So you import your friends XFML file, and manually relate the categories that are the same. You set your weblog software up so it will import your friends file daily to check for changes. Now your software can automatically generate links to stories about the same topics on your friends weblog that show up with your stories.

Incidentally, Peter Van Dijck (the guy behind XFML) runs a superb blog covering information architecture and other web related topics - Guide to Ease. I've only been reading it for a few days but I'm hooked already.

Tags: information-architecture, peter-van-dijck, xfml