Call for participation - Jorne

[Brian Eubanks <iuban@users.sourceforge.net>]

coi rodo

I created an open-source project (on Sourceforge) called Jorne.

http://jorne.org

Its purpose is to create an N3/RDF ontology for Lojban, and to identify 
and tag any semantic equivalences to OWL or other well-known ontologies. 
The "jorne" gismu exactly describes what RDF does (although in N3 
syntax, the 2nd and 3rd sumti of jorne are swapped). I think it would be 
best to start with N3 because it is simpler than RDF. All Lojbanists 
should learn N3 syntax to get ready for the explosive growth of the 
Semantic Web! RSS was the first step, and look at how it has taken off in the past year.

The project's current plan:
1. Create a URI for adding Lojban literal text descriptions into an N3 
or RDF document. Here is my proposed way of inserting lojban text into 
an N3 document, to bootstrap the process:
=============
@prefix desc <http://jorne.org/rdf/2005/lojban/description/> .
<http://jorne.org> desc:literal "la jornes. zdile" .
<http://jorne.org> desc:uri <http://a-lojban-text-page-about-the-site> .
=============
(We could start using the above mapping immediately, and add an equivalency later 
to map it to later versions. RDF and N3 have an easy way to do that. 
We'll also want a MIME type for straight Lojban text, perhaps we can 
define text/lojban to be "ASCII or Unicode text that is parseable Lojban".)
2. Starting with the gismu list, create a correct usage of Lojban 
structures as N3 elements (and vice versa).
3. Map the Dublin Core to Lojban semantics
4. Map other ontologies (OWL, etc) to Lojban semantics
5. Convert the Lojban yacc grammar to a JavaCC version (this should be 
simple)
6. Using the JENA API, manipulate existing RDF graphs and generate 
correct Lojban sentences from them
7. Parse Lojban documents to generate RDF (using JENA) that integrates 
with everything else on the Semantic Web
8. Be happy in a world where Lojban is understood everywhere, and is the 
official language of the world ;-)

I think this will be an extremely fun project. The project needs people 
who have any combination of N3/RDF, Lojban, XML, or Java knowledge. For 
my part, I bring years of Java, XML and database experience to the table.

If we do this right, we can make jorne into a standard for the Semantic 
Web. The Lojban community is small enough that we could easily mark up 
every Lojban document on the web with an RDF description. Lojban would 
be the only language with every single document integrated into the 
Semantic Web!

Regards,
la iuban.
(Brian Eubanks)