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Semantic desktop

Computer interface design concept

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  • 4 chapters

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Problems to solve

The vision of the semantic desktop can be considered as a response to the perceived problems of existing user interfaces.

Metadata

Without good metadata, computers cannot easily learn many commonly needed attributes about files. For example, suppose one downloads a document by a particular author on a particular subject – though the document will likely clearly indicate its subject, author, source and possibly copyright information there may be no easy way for the computer to obtain this information and process it across applications like file managers, desktop search engines, and other services. This means the computer cannot search, filter or otherwise act upon the information as effectively as it otherwise could. This is very much the problem that the Semantic Web is concerned with.

File structure

Researchers in the iMemex project provide the following query examples:

  1. "Show me all LaTeX 'Introduction' sections pertaining to project PIM that contain the phrase 'Mike Franklin'."
  2. "Show me all documents pertaining to project 'OLAP' that have a figure containing the phrase 'Indexing Time' in its label."

Both of these queries need to parse the file structure, the first one to find a section in a LaTeX document, the second one to find figures and their labels in documents of any format, both of which current OSs don't know how to do.

Inside-outside file boundary

A user might want to relate in a single query information that is maintained by the file system, such as placement in a folder, and information that is inside a file. With current technology, this query cannot be issued in one single request.

In query example 1 above, the project information is only materialized in the folder hierarchy; the rest of the filters relate to the inside of the file, and some of it needs to parse the file structure (see above). This leads to performing a first query in the file system and further search inside a file.

Data-application coupling

There is also the problem of relating different files with each other. For example, on operating systems such as Unix, e-mails are stored separately from files. Neither has anything to do with tasks, notes or planned activities that may be stored in a calendar program. Contacts might be stored in another program. However, all these forms of information might simultaneously be relevant and necessary for a particular task.

Data locality and sharing

Related to this, a user will often access a lot of data from the Internet which are segregated from the data stored locally on the computer and accessed through a browser or other program. Researchers in the iMemex project provide the example of searching both in the local folder hierarchy and also in email attachments, which are located on an IMAP server (see above, query example 2). In addition, the folder hierarchies are often different on both systems.

As well as accessing data, a user has to share data, often through e-mail or separate file transfer programs.

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