date: August 6, 2004
authors: Katya, Joost

This bluebook note is a result from discussions during the aug 5
leesklub: "Discourse ontology workshop (2)". The objective of this
note is to find out to what extent the various projects within the
group use similar structures for the representations of the different
(discourse) stages.


World - (RDF/Database)
It is difficult to make a generic/reusable structure for the world
since we, in general can not influence its structure. Having said this
it is always possible to transform it to an RDF graph, which we assume
is the case in the rest of the note.

  Aria - DB     
  DISC - RDF
  IWA  - RDF
  Sample - RDF
  Topia - RDF

Fabula - (RDF) 
Fabula is a subgraph of the world. In some cases, such
as Sample and Disc this is implicitly realized by iterative querying
the world. Note that the fabula contains domain relations and is
structured as a graph. In addition there exists a domain ontology
which describes the domain schema.

  Aria - XML
  DISC - RDF 
  IWA  - RDF
  Sample - RDF
  Topia - RDF

Genre Template (new state)
We feel the step from fabula to plot is a large one and consists of
intermediate state(s). In order to transform a graph to a structured
progression at least two things need to be done 1) transform a graph to
a presentation tree 2) map domain relations to order, grouping,
priorities, recurrences as defined by the structured
progression. 

In both disc an Sample there is a notion of a Genre template which
consist of structures like:
Essay:
	Intro
		
	Main
		principles
		related
	Conclusion

Biography
	Facts
	Work
	Private life

These are rather generic templates of which the leaf nodes present
domain concepts. In Disc this is done by Narrative Units(NU) which link to
terms from the domain ontology schema. Sample has similar (unnamed)
structures and can possibly reuse the NU structures defined as in
Disc. The problem here is the definitions of Genre templates. 

In theory the can exist a wide variety of templates which can be
created individually. However this is not very convenient. There are
similarities between different genre templates, such as intro, main,
conclusion which you'd like to reuse among different
templates. Furthermore the templates like Artist biography  can be
very similar to Person Biography in which case you only want to extend
the person biography with specific artist data.

Narrative Units contain domain relations (table) and can possibly be
organized in a hierarchy. For example ArtistPersonalLife extends
PersonalLife.

The problem is how to model generic templates in a convenient and
extensible way? Possible alternatives are:

1)
Genre
	Essay
		Essay of Movement
			Main
				StylePrincples
				Members
			Conclusion
				Artworks
		Essay of Artist
			Intro
				Facts
			Main
				StylePrincples
			Conclusion
				Artworks
2)
Genre
	Intro
		Facts (Essay of Artist)

	Main
		StylePrincples (Essay of Movement)
		Members (Essay of Movement)

	
	Conclusion
		Artworks (Essay of Artist, Essay of Movement)

Problem with 1 a repetition of genre template structure (intro,
main, conclusion) and define whole template individually

Problem with 2 is less flexibility (all top-level genre section are the
same) Annotate each NU with applicable Genre. 


Plot - (Structured Progression)

  Aria - SP
  DISC - SP
  IWA - 

  Sample - Sample does not have a an explicit fabula but it does not
  go from world to plot (=sp) directly. Sample has an intermediate
  state like the genre structure. The plot is more or less
  the end of the sample focus and in theory this can be fed into
  Cuypers which does all the remaining presentation stuff.

Topia - SP

Story - (HFO)
  Aria - HFO
  DISC - HFO
  IWA - 
  Sample - HFO 
  Topia - 

User-experience -