README  -*- Text -*-

* What is File (meta)Data to RDF (FDRDF)?

	The File (meta)Data to RDF (FDRDF) tool builds a catalogue of
	descriptions of the files specified.

	The descriptions currently include:

	* file status (as reported by the `stat' system call);

	* SHA-1 hash over the file contents;

	* file MIME type (as guessed by the `file' tool);

	* geospatial metadata (as reported by `Geo::GDAL');

	* GRIB file composition (as reported by `grib_ls'.)

	The current status of this package is: ``bare bones''.

* Why FDRDF?

	... There're a plenty of packages that aim at cataloguing
	digital data archives -- such as the archives of digital audio
	and video records.  Unfortunately, what we've encountered were
	the tasks which lie outside of the scope of such programs.
	Namely, it was observed that a typical cataloguing software:

	* is oriented towards one or more data representations in a
	  single problem domain; (say, only works with audio records
	  in Ogg/Vorbis format);

	* uses an ad-hoc database schema and (or) data format, that no
	  other software can understand;

	* provides no suitable interface for the other software to
	  control it and access its data; most of the time, only a
	  graphical user interface is provided.

	This software tries a different approach:

	* the ``base'' tool is problem domain- and format-agnostic;
	  instead, it relies on a set of ``modules'' (which could
	  either be implemented wholly in Perl, or be Perl wrappers
	  around non-Perl tools and libraries) for gathering specific
	  metadata;

	* the metadata gathered are recorded as an RDF model, which
	  then can be output in one of the Raptor library-supported
	  representations (at the time of writing, the list includes:
	  RDF-XML, Ntriples, Turtle, JSON, etc.), or can be put into a
	  Redland RDF storage directly, or both, or neither;

	* it's designed to be run from Shell, so it's possible to use
	  it from any software capable of doing a fork(2) + exec(2)
	  system calls combination.

	Please note, however, that the modules themselves do currently
	use ad-hoc RDF schemata, and the particular keys (URI's) are
	still subject to change!

	It's expected that as the experience working with particular
	file formats' metadata will built up, and the requirements
	will be defined, the RDF schemata will be standardized.

* Availability

	The latest versions of the package should be listed on its
	home page at:

    http://lhc.am-1.org/lhc/fdrdf/

* The instructions

	The installation is described in `INSTALL'.

	For usage, check the manual page in `doc/fdrdf.1'.  For quick
	reference, look at the `$ fdrdf --help' output.

* History

	The most part of the 0.1 version of this package was written
	by Ivan Shmakov, August through September, 2010.  The `grib',
	`file' and `gdalinfo' modules were written by Svetlana
	Zelenina (with Ivan Shmakov occasionally looking over the
	shoulder.)

	The 0.2 version followed slightly more than a week later,
	bringing some incompatible changes, new features, vast
	clean-ups, and improvements both to the code and documentation.

	Ivan Shmakov <ivan@main.uusia.org>

* License

Copyright (C) 2010 Ivan Shmakov

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A
copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free Documentation
License'' file as part of this distribution.

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