WYMeditor for RDFa

[bkudrle]

I am interested in the possibility of using the WYMeditor as the front end for an editor with which to embed RDFa tags in the code. It is the best javascript candidate that I have found for embedding RDFa in the HTML because of its emphasis on strict XHTML compliance (not absolutely necessary for RDFa, but makes it nicer to work with it), the editing display that contains some indication of the surrounding tags (e.g., P tags or H3 tags) and the straightforward separation of tags and attributes (in WYMeditor's case, the attributes of class). There is great potential here IMHO, and WYMeditor used with RDFa could potentially be a great tool in the march towards the Semantic Web.

So my question for this forum is whether anyone has already started such a task (I can't see any references to this, but I wanted to make sure) and if I were to implement something like this, would there be any interest in integrating this in the core, or would I be better off doing this as a fork of the code? From what I can tell from just briefly playing around with things, for the first pass I would need to make it so that certain attributes could be embedded in tags (e.g., about="foo:bar" and property="dc:title" in addition to the currently allowed e.g., class="important") without being erased, and then being able to add a RDF drop-down similar to the class drop-down that is currently available usually to the right of the editing pane. With just those changes done, it would be ready for at least my initial use for the project that I am interested in using it for (an Electronic Lab Notebook).

I just wanted to throw these ideas out there and see what interest there was. Any feedback or advice as to how to proceed is appreciated. Thank you.

[jfh]

Hi,
Being able to edit RDFa with WYMeditor is one of our current main priorities, and we've been working lately on implementing some missing methods, such as insert, wrap and unwrap, to e.g. support more inline elements, like span.

I've just uploaded a RDFa editor implementation test page to the trunk.
ATM, it simply extends the XHTML lexer/parser, to support RDFa attributes and 'standard' vocabularies.
Next step is to implement the 'RDFa UI', perhaps in the form of a new panel or custom buttons. In any case, it must be simple to grasp and easy to use.
To attain this objective, perhaps it will support only a subset of the RDFa architecture - I'm not sure for the moment.

Anyway it's great to hear about your project. I'd be glad to discuss it with you (and other interested developers of course), so we can share our thoughts and ideas here.

[bkudrle]

Thanks so much for your reply and it is so good to hear that you are also interested in RDFa capabilities . I have downloaded the code from the SVN repository (before I was using a version bundled with a Drupal module). Just from my brief preliminary testing it looks like the current version will be very helpful for use with RDFa and my project. Thanks for your hard (and foresightful) work on this. I hope to go over the code and examples from SVN in the next few days and get back with you in greater detail about any issues or help that I may be able to offer.

[bkudrle]

Just wanted to followup to say that after looking at the options and taking into account my relative noobe status with both WYMeditor and Drupal (the framework that I will be including WYMeditor with) and the fact that I have a pretty tight deadline for the initial rollout, that I have decided to just hack the WYMeditor code to include the specific features that I need. So far it is going well and the WYMeditor examples have proven very helpful in incorporating the features that I need. As time goes on I hope to be able to backtrack and do this in a more elegant manner and at that time hopefully contribute some code and/or ideas back to the community. For those interested, I will try to keep the Wiki up to date on the site for my project at http://www.MyLabBook.org.

[jfh]

Thanks for the followup - I'm glad your project is going well, and I'm looking forward to read more documentation

I've updated the RDFa implementation test page. It's just an early proof of concept, but perhaps the code will help you to e.g. customize the editor.
I'm not sure ATM if it's better to insert elements with RDFa attributes, or to put RDFa attributes on existing elements (the current choice for classes).
I'll will have to improve support for selected inline elements (instead of only blocks), and support for more complex structures, such as the ones described in the RDFa Primer.
The visual feedback (with colors) is in a very early stage

Any suggestion welcome.

[BHD]

I'm not sure ATM if it's better to insert elements with RDFa attributes, or to put RDFa attributes on existing elements (the current choice for classes).

Well, consider the case of adding an author name to the document, and then associating the various metadata to that: that the author is a foaf:Person, that he or she has a URI that identifies them, and that the string you see is in fact a foaf:name. Right now, it's too tedious.

But this is hard, and involves trade-offs.

Ideally, I'd like this sort of thing to be an extension of the link interface, where perhaps one could add a plugin for specific relations. So the user experience is, I click the link button, the window pops-up, and I can select from an option list "author."

But then what?

I don't know. Maybe the window adds a "name" input field? Maybe there's room for that field to be auto-completed, and to then have the URI automatically pulled in based on that?

Also, note: the DCMI is basically deprecating the old dc:creator and such properties because of their ambiguity. They will instead substitute a new dcterms:creator, which is more appropriate in this case.

[ithoughts_de]

Hi there! Glad I found this editor and this forum post, as that exactly what I'll try to do in the next 3-4 weeks. I tried my luck with TinyMCE before, but I didn't find my way though the documentation there and the code was ... well, lets just say I more like the WYMeditors code. The work on RDFa also shows that it is possible with this editor ... I'll also work on autosuggestions and complete RDFa-triples. Cross fingers

[Richard Hancock]

Hi All,

I have just integrated the base install of Wymeditor (a build of the current svn revision - 621) with Drupal

Now I'd like to add the RDFa support shown in the example ( http://files.wymeditor.org/wymeditor/tr ... ditor.html ) to my Drupal install.

What is the best way to do that?

Cheers,

Richard.

[ithoughts_de]

Hi there!

Open the source code of the example page (http://files.wymeditor.org/wymeditor/trunk/src/examples/15-rdfa-editor.html) - insert the additional scripts and css code from there into your page and it should work like shown in the example. Seems like Google attracts people to RDFa?

[astilla]

I'm also interested in following how WYMeditor deals with RDFa so am about to start looking at what it does at present.

I have a need for a rich-text editor that can either be controlled by the user, or programmatically controlled (e.g if my main JS infers something from what a user has typed in).

Fingers crossed that this editor either does what I need I or am able to contribute something if I extend it in any way.

Andrew
--
andrew.bate@talis.com
http://www.astilla.co.uk/
http://twitter.com/AndrewBate

[pavelhub]

Hi all here is my site with RDFa

http://pavel-personal.ideateam.com.ua/personalinfo.aspx

let me know what you think about it.
Thx guys!