Bug 72653

Summary:	Support for Friend-of-a-Friend (export and reference)
Product:	[Unmaintained] kab3	Reporter:	Kjetil Kjernsmo <kjetil>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Tobias Koenig <tokoe>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	wishlist
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Kjetil Kjernsmo 2004-01-14 18:50:08 UTC

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.1.4)
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS:          Linux

I think it would be really cool to have some kind of support for the Friend-of-a-friend project, i.e. the not-really-anymore Semantic Web vaporware project...

http://www.foaf-project.org/

For one thing, it would be great to simply add a field to KAddressbook where an URI to a friend's FOAF file can be entered. That would effectively make it possible to generate a FOAF reference to the people in the addressbook by running a script on the addressbook. 

This is quite straightforward, isn't it...?

But I think the idea could be extended further. For example, people (at least I) tend to classify their contacts by using the categories, and so, the categories say something about from where you know somebody, and that's really interesting. It could be useful in understanding the relationships between people, and how they evolve. So, some way to export the information in the addressbook to FOAF records would be really cool. 

Eh, and to plug my own FOAF-file:
http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/foaf.xrdf
:-)

Comment 1 Kjetil Kjernsmo 2004-05-11 09:12:00 UTC

Still a wish for >3.2.2

Comment 2 Kjetil Kjernsmo 2004-10-31 18:10:01 UTC

Thanks for confirming!

I wonder if it would interesting to make a complete RDF backend.... vCard itself has been reformulated to RDF/XML, see 
http://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf
but RDF is not limited to XML, it can be serialized to many formats and markups. 
Furthermore, there are also well developed ways to store RDF in a SQL database, see for example the RDF::Core Perl Module: http://search.cpan.org/dist/RDF-Core/

By choosing a representation that has a lot of momentum in the Semantic Web, and that can serve as a layer between the application and both pure file storage and SQL, depending on user's preferences, I was thinking that one gains flexibility to support different uses of the data, and it would also effectively solve Bug 18198.

As for the original idea of this bug: The main idea was simply to generate foaf:knows records. This is also very interesting, but I have hacked up a hackish Perl script that does it now, it can be found in: http://dev.kjernsmo.net/perl-scripts/

Comment 3 Markus Luisser 2004-11-01 17:42:29 UTC

Well apart from the RDF::Core perl module, there is a complete library written in C with bindings to most of the important higher level languages (C, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java) here: http://librdf.org/

If i understand the technical stuff correctly thats a complete implementation of the w3 standard supporting storage on a number of backends including mysql. The use of mysql for this purpose is a very good idea i think, especially considering that a users FOAF data will regulary have to answer questions like 'who knows the person with the adress...?' which is exactly the sort of thing you would want to use a database for. But imho the user should still have the choice to use kde without mysql.

Nevertheless, creating a backend to work with RDF data is a good idea i think - it should be quite easy for example to include RDF data into jabber/kopete once the backend exists (jabber is based on an w3 xml standard). And i think a jabber version that 'speaks' FOAF with kopete and kmail/kaddressbook as frontend could be a real killer application in the 'relationship management' category - from locating an old schoolfriend via FOAF to the import of his current vcard into the kaddressbook it would only be a mouseklick or two...

Comment 4 Kjetil Kjernsmo 2004-11-01 20:50:40 UTC

I am embarrased not to have mentioned the Redland library. Yes, it is an excellent toolkit, or so those who know it say. I guess it is time to discuss these ideas a bit on IRC, and perhaps file a separate wishlist bug.

Comment 5 Tobias Koenig 2009-08-05 16:03:41 UTC

The development of the old KAddressBook will be discontinued for KDE 4.4.
Since the new application has the same name, but a completly new code base we close all bug reports against the old version and ask the submitters to resend there reports against the new product.