Abiword and Calligra: Dragging RDF kicking and screaming onto your desktop

Ben Martin

The ODF has provision for storing one or more RDF files and having them associated with content in a document. This opens the door for your word processor to know what you are doing rather than just a sequence of UTF-8 with lipstick. In a way this can make the actual text content of the document a poor second class citizen as the word "Ben" can be replaced with other information from local RDF in the ODF file or as an anchor to reach out to the semantic web for more detail to replace the existing text. An example of the later is having a train trip link to RDF, then the word processor can check if that train is on time or not for you.

I have tried to make RDF simple to use. Want a contact in your document, just drag a contact from evolution into the text and you are done. Right click the inserted text to tell the word processor what information to display in the document text for that person. Likewise, drag an event from abiword to calligra, and again to evolution to move the data around the desktop. RDF anchors in the text of a document can also be semantically linked. This way, you and the computer know that Barry is your dog, while Garry is your doctor. This opens the door for "Tables of Semantics" to be produced such as family relations, timelines for logistics, and bills of material. Such tables could augment the table of contents to allow other nagivation paths through the document.