Tools We Need

= Tools We Need =

Dumping ground for ideas for applications, services, and infrastructure needed for open knowledge development.

Distributed Storage/Filesystems
See projects/Distributed_Storage

Timelines
One would like a tool that would display timelines given input with time tags. Two related concerns here:


 * 1) Specifying the input format (i.e. the time tags)
 * 2) Writing code that will then display the input
 * 3) * suggested output formats:
 * 4) *# html + js
 * 5) *# png

Existing Software

 * Easy Timeline: http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/EasyTimeline/Introduction.htm
 * Perl based
 * uses ploticus and outputs to png
 * Nothing in python
 * JS: http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/
 * JavaScript Timeline Widget, from OpenLink Ajax Toolkit

Rendering of geo locations using **open data**
Would like a simple software package to allow one to render location on a map with link to text. Essential that underlying map data be open. Would also like this to be deployable locally in addition to on a server. Preference would be for python or javascript type implementation.

See also: http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2006-August/000127.html and the resulting thread.

Also, as of May 2008, if you go to OpenStreetMap (http://openstreetmap.org/) and click on the new "Export" tab, you can generate a smidge of HTML (or static images or vectors or what have you) for importing an OSM map into an iFrame on any web page.

Existing Software

 * JavaScript Mapping Widget,
 * demo page

Text annotation
What text annotation tools exist and what API do they require from the text? To take a concrete example: how would one annotate Shakespeare texts in a non-invasive manner and what open source tools already exist? A demo implementation would be particularly useful.

Existing Software

 * ODS-Wiki and ODS-Discussion, components of OpenLink Data Spaces
 * ODS-Wiki is a Wiki Platform supporting the Atom Publishing Protocol, Twiki, MediaWiki (Wikimedia), and Creole markup dialects
 * ODS-Discussion is a Conversation & Discussion Management tool that also provides Conversation/Comment/Discussion management services to all of the ODS applications.