AOIM = AVM? VAMP contacts, anyone?

[Norman Gray]

Rick and Ray, hello.

Rick wrote:

> Do we have the most recent AOIM (apparently, now called "AVM", so we  
> may need to change names) taxonomy?  What does IPTC/XMP look like?   
> If the VAMP people are putting a lot of effort into tools, do they  
> use/know about SKOS?  I confess that I have no real personal ties to  
> the people involved.  Anybody know any of the authors?

Our current version of the AOIM vocabulary in the volute repository <http://code.google.com/p/volute/source/browse/trunk/projects/vocabularies/src/AOIM/AOIM-master.ttl.in 
 > was generated from an XML file originally produced by Rick, and the  
process tweaked at different times by both Alasdair and me (see <http://code.google.com/p/volute/source/browse/trunk/projects/vocabularies/src/AOIM/Notes 
 >).  I'm afraid I don't know which version of the AVM document it  
corresponds to, so I'd really like to update it.

It sounds like it would be wise to rename AOIM -> AVM, here and in the  
WD -- is that correct?  If so, before Trieste would probably be best,  
as I'd like to effectively freeze the document this month.

Is there a machine-readable version of the vocabulary to hand, instead  
of the version in the PDF file? It doesn't much matter what format  
it's in, as long as it's regular enough to write a parser for.  If  
that version is sitting at some URL, then the most current version  
could be automatically scooped into the build process.

I've played with XMP before, so I know a little about that, if that  
helps.  XMP is RDF, as it happens.

On 2008 Apr 21, at 14:12, Ray Plante wrote:

> I don't think the authors are aware of the semantics WG use of SKOS,  
> but it would be good to get some informative dialogue going.  The  
> authors are not, what we might call, "IVOA insiders".  They are,  
> however, active in the astronomy outreach community, and their  
> document is highly focused in its intent and target community.

It sounds like an excellent vocabulary, and exactly the sort of thing  
we'd hope that SKOS would be able to help with.

The Vocabularies document [1] includes a number of pre-existing  
vocabularies refashioned as SKOS, including the IAU thesaurus, the A&A  
keyword list, AOIM and the UCD word list.  The intent is that these  
will be useful as they stand, but that they won't be maintained as  
part of this document's future.  Instead, we hope that the SKOSified  
versions of the vocabularies will be taken over by the originators of  
those vocabularies, and maintained as part of those vocabularies'  
maintainance processes.

> I'll be setting up a twiki page under the Registry area to assemble  
> discussion of the VAMP document and report on activities as  
> development continues.  Meanwhile, it would be great to hear from  
> anyone that has an interest in the VAMP document and development.   
> In particular, I would be interested to hear how VAMP and the  
> semantics work relate to each other.


I'd be happy to help, with the SKOSification and with the document  
itself if that'd be useful.

All the best,

Norman

[1] See <http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/vocabularies.html> and  
the rolling "editors' draft" at  <http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ivoa/vocabularies/ 
 >


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester