Extension:SemanticWebBrowser

The SemanticWebBrowser extension adds capabilities to use Semantic MediaWiki as a Semantic Web Browser (SWB). SWB is similar to Shortipedia, but intended for "every-day-use":


 * Idea to combine both content of a wiki and the Semantic Web
 * SWB focus on browsing the Semantic Web
 * SWB does not care too much about provenance tracking, as it relies solely on "official" information provided by a URI.

Versioning

 * Note: As of 2013-02-04, SWB has been migrated from SVN to Git; development is continued using Git, thus, the code in SVN might be outdated.
 * Git URLs
 * Git anonymous: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/SemanticWebBrowser.git
 * Git registered: ssh://USERNAME@gerrit.wikimedia.org:29418/mediawiki/extensions/SemanticWebBrowser.git
 * All changes to SWB: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/extensions/SemanticWebBrowser.git;a=summary

Installation
Once you have downloaded the code, place the SemanticWebBrowser directory within your MediaWiki 'extensions' directory. Then add the following code to your LocalSettings.php file:

Requirements
Semantic Web Browser has been run successfully with:


 * MediaWiki 1.18 or above
 * Semantic MediaWiki 1.7 or above
 * PHP 5.3 or above

Used Libraries

 * EasyRDF - http://www.aelius.com/njh/easyrdf/

Configuration parameters

 * none, so far

User rights

 * none, so far

Version 0.3

 * Visualizing and hiding of incoming links.

Version 0.2
2011-10-05


 * Basic functionality of browsing implemented: Special Page BrowseWiki.
 * Committed to SVN

Version 0.1

 * Skeleton implemented

Examples

 * Josef Spieler - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseWiki/Josef_Spieler
 * Benedikt Kämpgen - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseWiki/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * Browsing FOAF file of Andreas Harth - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseWiki?title=Special%3ABrowseWiki&article=http%3A%2F%2Fharth.org%2Fandreas%2Ffoaf%23ah
 * A must-have example :-): Browsing FOAF file of Tim Berners-Lee: http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseWiki?title=Special%3ABrowseWiki&article=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FPeople%2FBerners-Lee%2Fcard%23i

Bugs and feature requests
You can use the Semantic MediaWiki mailing list, semediawiki-user, for questions, suggestions or bug reports about Semantic Web Browser. If possible, please add "[SWB]" at the beginning of the subject line, to clarify the subject matter. Also, it may help if you add Benedikt Kämpgen, at benedikt.kaempgen -at- kit.edu to CC.

Current Bugs and Todos
 
 * Special Page is named BrowseWiki. Better would be BrowseSW, or similar.
 * If URI is located on the same server as the wiki, an error is shown. For example: . Maybe a bug of EasyRDF?
 * BBC URIs cannot be resolved, although it is possible to do curl on it using "Accept: application/rdf+xml", e.g., see.
 * Gender URI cannot be resolved, e.g., Male.
 * Maybe related to wanted RDFa (or other embedded RDF) support, e.g., http://www.shopforia.com/cgi-bin/apf4/apf4.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=B002GYWHSQ
 * Gender URI features Micro Data?
 * Either SMW or MW seems to add additional "//" to URIs. Therefore, no links can be used, currently.

Planned Features

 * SWB should be more robust (e.g., if URI is not resolvable or takes too much time)
 * Allow to easily gather information from the Semantic Web into the wiki. Only clicks, no writing.
 * Also display Semantic Web data on a wiki page, e.g., in an "external" factbox.
 * Blank nodes, language tags, datatypes should be considered
 * Embedded RDF support. Instead of HTML file + RDF file, e.g., only RDFa file
 * e.g., Best Buy
 * Go recursively through all same-as links
 * Highlight more important properties and values
 * Caching
 * How to automatically identify equivalent URIs?

Acknowledgements
Part of the work on Semantic Web Browser has been carried out in the framework of the German Research Foundation (DFG) project entitled: "Entwicklung einer Virtuellen Forschungsumgebung für die Historische Bildungsforschung mit Semantischer Wiki-Technologie - Semantic MediaWiki for Collaborative Corpora Analysis" (SMW-CorA) (INST 367/5-1, INST 5580/1-1), in the domain of “Scientific Library Services and Information Systems“ (LIS).