MT-Redland Screenshots

April 5th, 2005 9:01 AM

I’ve put up version 0.004 of MT-Redland, and I think it’s coming along really well. I noticed that the previous versions were relying on a one word hack I had made to the Movable Type code, so this is the first one that would work by itself without patching the code.

I’ve got a test install of Movable Type running on my local machine with the entire database from http://kasei.us/ (roughly 700 entries and 900 comments), and it’s holding up surprisingly well, all things considered.

I’ve got a new template tag that will export an entry’s data as RSS 1.0. I’ve gotten the CMS hooks to a point where I think they’re stable, simple, and work well. And the review plugin now uses the hooks, as does the new locations plugin for specifying a spatial geographic point for the entry.

Here’s a screenshot of the Movable Type Edit Entry interface with the topics and review plugins:

Screenshot of the Movable Type New Entry page with new fields for entry topics

And here’s a screenshot of the kind of possibilities this approach opens up. In it, I’m performing a search of entries with an RDQL query, finding all entries that are about an Image that I have rated higher than seven out of ten:

Screenshot of a Movable Type search using an RDQL Query

This clearly isn’t a great interface for performing searches, but the ability to open up queries like this (more than just keyword searches) to a wider audience is exciting. By combining these RDQL searches with the ability to retrieve search results in RSS, some really interesting things tumble out. You could get a custom feed of posts to my site based on any criteria you want: only posts to the Semantic Web cateogry; only posts about Images; only posts about movies that I rank higher than 7/10; only posts that Adam has commented on (to pick someone at random); only posts that link to Jerkcity, &c.

I’m excited.

As an aside, I thought I’d mention that in going back for the link to the post on retrieving queries as RSS, I stumbled onto my “Movable Type” post from March 4th, 2004, and it would appear that I’ve come full circle:

I want to be able to, easily, annotate my posts with arbitrary RDF, and integrate that into my recent work on annotating my photos.

I could hack MT all to hell and get what I need but, in the end, it would be a losing battle both because I would soon fall behind releases of MT, and I would have to work around functionality and structure in MT that I don’t necessarily want or need.

…Of course, MT 3.0 might solve a lot of my problems, but there’s no way to tell at the moment, and the lack of RDF support is quickly becoming more than I want to put up with.

Comments

so the MT codebase isn’t changed at all? what about all the mt CMS templates? those are, in my mind, a real part of the codebase

Posted by: mfrumin on April 6th, 2005 6:13 PM

Nothing is changed. Not even the CMS templates. The data is all installed with hooks into the page generation.

Posted by: kasei on April 6th, 2005 6:37 PM