Re: extensions and expected values

On 7/29/13 12:59 PM, Matt Garrish wrote:
> Hi Karen,
>
> Thanks for sharing that proposal; finding everything that is going on in
> schema.org is also not easy.

No kidding. I had no idea your group existed, nor that you were working 
on DAISY.

It does raise another question we had,
> which was whether to extend bookFormatType for audio books, braille
> books, etc. (e.g., is Paperback/Braille an accurate presentation of a
> print braille book, given the three existing types). As you likely know,
> the flexibility of the DAISY formats means that publications can take
> the form of text-only ebooks, structured audiobooks, or some combination
> of both (and now EPUB 3 allows similar production), so the formats could
> be extensions of both ebooks and audiobooks. These are some of the grey
> areas of metadata application, of course.

The BibEx group came to the conclusion that audiobooks aren't just books 
+ bookFormatType because we wanted to add at least one new property: 
readBy.[1] We also noted that in the commercial audiobook sector the 
abridged- and unabridged-ness are prominently displayed and are 
considered different products. We were going to associate this with 
audiobook, but thought that it might be useful for print and ebooks. (A 
few of us are old enough to remember the Reader's Digest Condensed Books 
series.)

DAISY *is* tricky because it is a combination, although note that 
Amazon's "WhisperSync" also combines ebook and performed audio. I see 
your dilemma in terms of where to put it, and wonder if it couldn't be 
type with two formats: ebook and audiobook. (How to do that in schema, 
though, is not obvious to me.) Also, doesn't DAISY sometimes get some 
specific DRM/rights issues applied, like being certified as a visually 
impaired person (in the US) to get access to materials in copyright? 
That complicates matters.

>
> I don't speak for the group, but my concern with going by the player is
> that there can be many players that can play open formats like DAISY and
> EPUB (excluding the DRMed walled gardens, of course). When searching for
> accessible formats, there are fewer of them than there are players that
> can play them, which is why people often look by format.


Are you intending for accessibility to be a schema.org class? I can't 
tell from your proposal where it would fit in.[2] It brings to mind the 
potential faceted nature of some classes - I think of them as "other 
characteristics" rather than "essences." It would be great to be able to 
use accessibility anywhere, either to describe an online resource or to 
describe a product. Then some of the accessibility properties could be 
related to file types, and others to actual devices. (It's not an easy 
area to tease apart.)

In terms of faceting, to me aspects like color, size, weight, location 
(of the thing), rights (complex, of course)... those all lend themselves 
to be free-floating characteristics that could be applied wherever 
appropriate. This is one of the design goals of library classifications 
-- to classify things by their "essence" but to have the ability to add 
other characteristics that are useful either as qualifiers or even to be 
used on their own. I often long for a good set of qualifiers to use in 
semantic web ontologies. It shouldn't be all that difficult to add a 
dozen or so key ones. I'd be tempted to add them to /Thing, although I 
haven't thought it through thoroughly.

kc

[1] Some of the performers of these audiobooks have become so popular 
that libraries that carry them had to go back and make the name of the 
performer searchable. There are audiobook listeners who would listen to 
almost anything read by their favorite performers. Myself, if Simon 
Prebble read a grocery list, I'd listen gladly.

[2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Accessibility
>
> We're trying to make the most effective use of the existing properties
> in conjunction with the defining access modes, accessible media
> features, etc. to ideally enable users to search for content more
> suitable to their needs, and avoid the current problem of having to
> investigate all search results to find appropriate content.
>
> But when it comes to making effective use, the existing documentation
> doesn't fill in all the gaps. Some examples in schema.org don't use the
> expected types to express information, for example (author names as
> strings instead of Person types), but is it more or less bad from a
> search perspective to work around unknowns?
>
> Matt
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Karen Coyle
> Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 9:51 AM
> To: public-vocabs@w3.org
> Subject: Re: extensions and expected values
>
> Matt, the Bibliographic group is close to a proposal on audiobook [1].
> We were thinking of using "playerType" from audioObject. Whatever
> solution you select (because it is more important for accessibility) we
> should probably incorporate by sub-classing.
>
> kc
> [1] http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Audiobook
>
>
> On 7/26/13 5:44 AM, Matt Garrish wrote:
>> Hello folks,
>> A couple of questions which I hope aren’t too naive, but between reading
>> this list and what documentation exists, it’s not always clear what best
>> practices are for schema.org.
>> First, should we (the accessibility metadata group) be recommending that
>> people use the “/” extension mechanism for accessible book formats like
>> EPUB and DAISY. The extension page notes
>> “http://schema.org/EBook/KindleFormat” as an extension of the
>> bookFormatType enumeration, but is that URI syntax expected to last?
>> Should we instead recommend using a more basic string like “DAISY3” or
>> “EPUB3” to avoid future problems, or is the use of string values with
>> bookFormat problematic in itself? Recent discussions on this list have
>> cast some doubts.
>> And that leads to the other question we have, which is what to do when a
>> needed data type doesn’t have an exact match in schema.org? If you have
>> adapted a work to make it accessible and want to note that it is an
>> adaptation of another, should we indicate an expected value of URL even
>> though a URI is wanted, since URNs may be the only usable identifiers?
>> In other words, is usage context more important than the expected value?
>> For example, if I use link/@href <mailto:link/@href> for URLs and
>> meta/@content <mailto:meta/@content> for URNs, does it matter that the
>> expected value is URL because it’s expected that most adaptations will
>> have a referenceable source on a publisher’s site?
>> Thanks in advance for any insights that can be provided,
>> Matt
>

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Monday, 29 July 2013 20:47:59 UTC