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Posted to dev@shindig.apache.org by René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de> on 2014/12/01 13:47:01 UTC

Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Dear Shindig community,

we are facing a challange in our project, that we are using Shindig to
collect activities from various systems and want to show activities coming
from Shindig in every system. Currently Shindig only delivers the basic
activity data like activity verb, object, target and so on. However, we’d
like to show a natural language version of the activity in the activity
stream (full sentence) which includes multi-lingual presentation of the
contents. An example would be „<actor> has added a comment to <object>“ or
„<actor> renamed document <object> into <target>“. The activitystrea.ms
standard specifies the title attribute for that purpose. 

 <http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity>
http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity

In Shindig this attribute attribute is present and handled, but only in a
pass-through manner. 

 

In order to avoid duplication of code, our natural choice would be to extend
Shindig to generate the natural language version of the activities in the
title attribute, if title is not present in the database. We would use files
for translation and formatting templates (only string formatting, not
colouring or layout), so that every administrator can influence both without
any coding. 

 

Would this be an interesting extension for the Shindig base system and do
you have any suggestions on how to integrate such an extension from an
architecture point of view? We are e.g. not sure whether to deliver several
translation in the same JSON as shown here

 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLanguage
Values>
http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLanguageV
alues

or use a parameter from the client to choose the language. 

My guess would be that other people will face similar problems.

 

Regards

René

AW: Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Posted by René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de>.
I'm glad that you see it positively Ryan. 
I guess your concern is regarding the semantics of the activities, that might vary from application to application a little bit. 
However, from my perspective Shindig as a central unit should also have some kind of harmonization role regarding semantics. I think it is helpful to have a consistent set of well-defined activities and hide system-specifics up to a certain amount. 
I would provide a text-file with suggestions for English and German and every administrator that uses Shindig would be free to alter them for their setup or add those files for different languages. I can also imagine the Shindig community providing two or three different versions of that file depending on the application scenario like company intranets (our use case) or internet communities (maybe semantics are different in this case).

Finally, the feature should be configurable so it can be turned on and off by the administrator and of course it should not overwrite existing title attributes coming from the database. With these two mechanisms in place, everybody should be happy from my perspective. People who don't like the feature simply turn it off. Others that have applications in place that set the title on their own don't have to fear that the new feature will interfere with those and all the other don't have to implement own code for creating the natural language strings.

Please find enclosed a document that describes how we use the general activitystrea.ms verbs in our use case. SCHub is the project acronym denoting Social Collaboration Hub. That might further clarify things.


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Ryan Baxter [mailto:rbaxter85@gmail.com] 
Gesendet: Montag, 1. Dezember 2014 22:39
An: dev@shindig.apache.org
Betreff: Re: Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Makes sense Rene thanks.  But what I don't understand is how you propose Shindig be able to translate the activity, would the app creating the activity provide the translation?

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 12:57 PM, René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de> wrote:
> Dear Ryan,
> Sorry that my description was not precise enough.
> What I want to achieve is: store <actor>, <verb>, <object>, and 
> <target> of an activity in Shindig and when retrieving the activity get a JSON that delivers the stored values and in addition includes the title attribute with something like {
>    "language": "en",
>    "title":"<actor> renamed document <object> into <target>"
> }
> Shindig should use a lookup table that has a natural language template per activity verb.
>
> With real data instead of placeholders this would look like {
>    "language": "en",
>    "title": "Peter renamed document 'meeting protocol2.pdf' into 'meeting protocol for second project review.pdf'"
> }
>
> I hope that helps. If not, please try to rephrase what you understood, so that I can see where exactly the problem with understanding is.
> Regards
> René
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Ryan Baxter [mailto:rbaxter85@gmail.com]
> Gesendet: Montag, 1. Dezember 2014 17:18
> An: dev@shindig.apache.org
> Cc: Florian Holzschuher; Christian Ochsenkühn
> Betreff: Re: Natural language version of activities in Shindig
>
> Hi Rene,
>
> Can you provide a more concrete example of what you are trying to do?
> I am having a hard time grasping your question.
>
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 7:47 AM, René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de> wrote:
>> Dear Shindig community,
>>
>> we are facing a challange in our project, that we are using Shindig 
>> to collect activities from various systems and want to show 
>> activities coming from Shindig in every system. Currently Shindig 
>> only delivers the basic activity data like activity verb, object, target and so on.
>> However, we’d like to show a natural language version of the activity 
>> in the activity stream (full sentence) which includes multi-lingual 
>> presentation of the contents. An example would be „<actor> has added 
>> a comment to <object>“ or „<actor> renamed document <object> into 
>> <target>“. The activitystrea.ms standard specifies the title attribute for that purpose.
>>
>>  <http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity>
>> http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity
>>
>> In Shindig this attribute attribute is present and handled, but only 
>> in a pass-through manner.
>>
>>
>>
>> In order to avoid duplication of code, our natural choice would be to 
>> extend Shindig to generate the natural language version of the 
>> activities in the title attribute, if title is not present in the 
>> database. We would use files for translation and formatting templates 
>> (only string formatting, not colouring or layout), so that every 
>> administrator can influence both without any coding.
>>
>>
>>
>> Would this be an interesting extension for the Shindig base system 
>> and do you have any suggestions on how to integrate such an extension 
>> from an architecture point of view? We are e.g. not sure whether to 
>> deliver several translation in the same JSON as shown here
>>
>>
>> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalL
>> a
>> nguage
>> Values>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLa
>> n
>> guageV
>> alues
>>
>> or use a parameter from the client to choose the language.
>>
>> My guess would be that other people will face similar problems.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> René
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Posted by Ryan Baxter <rb...@gmail.com>.
Makes sense Rene thanks.  But what I don't understand is how you
propose Shindig be able to translate the activity, would the app
creating the activity provide the translation?

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 12:57 PM, René Peinl
<re...@hof-university.de> wrote:
> Dear Ryan,
> Sorry that my description was not precise enough.
> What I want to achieve is: store <actor>, <verb>, <object>, and <target> of an activity in Shindig and when retrieving the activity get a JSON that delivers the stored values and in addition includes the title attribute with something like
> {
>    "language": "en",
>    "title":"<actor> renamed document <object> into <target>"
> }
> Shindig should use a lookup table that has a natural language template per activity verb.
>
> With real data instead of placeholders this would look like
> {
>    "language": "en",
>    "title": "Peter renamed document 'meeting protocol2.pdf' into 'meeting protocol for second project review.pdf'"
> }
>
> I hope that helps. If not, please try to rephrase what you understood, so that I can see where exactly the problem with understanding is.
> Regards
> René
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Ryan Baxter [mailto:rbaxter85@gmail.com]
> Gesendet: Montag, 1. Dezember 2014 17:18
> An: dev@shindig.apache.org
> Cc: Florian Holzschuher; Christian Ochsenkühn
> Betreff: Re: Natural language version of activities in Shindig
>
> Hi Rene,
>
> Can you provide a more concrete example of what you are trying to do?
> I am having a hard time grasping your question.
>
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 7:47 AM, René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de> wrote:
>> Dear Shindig community,
>>
>> we are facing a challange in our project, that we are using Shindig to
>> collect activities from various systems and want to show activities
>> coming from Shindig in every system. Currently Shindig only delivers
>> the basic activity data like activity verb, object, target and so on.
>> However, we’d like to show a natural language version of the activity
>> in the activity stream (full sentence) which includes multi-lingual
>> presentation of the contents. An example would be „<actor> has added a
>> comment to <object>“ or „<actor> renamed document <object> into
>> <target>“. The activitystrea.ms standard specifies the title attribute for that purpose.
>>
>>  <http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity>
>> http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity
>>
>> In Shindig this attribute attribute is present and handled, but only
>> in a pass-through manner.
>>
>>
>>
>> In order to avoid duplication of code, our natural choice would be to
>> extend Shindig to generate the natural language version of the
>> activities in the title attribute, if title is not present in the
>> database. We would use files for translation and formatting templates
>> (only string formatting, not colouring or layout), so that every
>> administrator can influence both without any coding.
>>
>>
>>
>> Would this be an interesting extension for the Shindig base system and
>> do you have any suggestions on how to integrate such an extension from
>> an architecture point of view? We are e.g. not sure whether to deliver
>> several translation in the same JSON as shown here
>>
>>
>> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLa
>> nguage
>> Values>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLan
>> guageV
>> alues
>>
>> or use a parameter from the client to choose the language.
>>
>> My guess would be that other people will face similar problems.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> René
>>
>>
>>
>

AW: Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Posted by René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de>.
Dear Ryan,
Sorry that my description was not precise enough. 
What I want to achieve is: store <actor>, <verb>, <object>, and <target> of an activity in Shindig and when retrieving the activity get a JSON that delivers the stored values and in addition includes the title attribute with something like 
{ 
   "language": "en",
   "title":"<actor> renamed document <object> into <target>"
}
Shindig should use a lookup table that has a natural language template per activity verb.

With real data instead of placeholders this would look like
{
   "language": "en",
   "title": "Peter renamed document 'meeting protocol2.pdf' into 'meeting protocol for second project review.pdf'"
}

I hope that helps. If not, please try to rephrase what you understood, so that I can see where exactly the problem with understanding is.
Regards
René

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Ryan Baxter [mailto:rbaxter85@gmail.com] 
Gesendet: Montag, 1. Dezember 2014 17:18
An: dev@shindig.apache.org
Cc: Florian Holzschuher; Christian Ochsenkühn
Betreff: Re: Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Hi Rene,

Can you provide a more concrete example of what you are trying to do?
I am having a hard time grasping your question.

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 7:47 AM, René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de> wrote:
> Dear Shindig community,
>
> we are facing a challange in our project, that we are using Shindig to 
> collect activities from various systems and want to show activities 
> coming from Shindig in every system. Currently Shindig only delivers 
> the basic activity data like activity verb, object, target and so on. 
> However, we’d like to show a natural language version of the activity 
> in the activity stream (full sentence) which includes multi-lingual 
> presentation of the contents. An example would be „<actor> has added a 
> comment to <object>“ or „<actor> renamed document <object> into 
> <target>“. The activitystrea.ms standard specifies the title attribute for that purpose.
>
>  <http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity>
> http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity
>
> In Shindig this attribute attribute is present and handled, but only 
> in a pass-through manner.
>
>
>
> In order to avoid duplication of code, our natural choice would be to 
> extend Shindig to generate the natural language version of the 
> activities in the title attribute, if title is not present in the 
> database. We would use files for translation and formatting templates 
> (only string formatting, not colouring or layout), so that every 
> administrator can influence both without any coding.
>
>
>
> Would this be an interesting extension for the Shindig base system and 
> do you have any suggestions on how to integrate such an extension from 
> an architecture point of view? We are e.g. not sure whether to deliver 
> several translation in the same JSON as shown here
>
>
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLa
> nguage
> Values>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLan
> guageV
> alues
>
> or use a parameter from the client to choose the language.
>
> My guess would be that other people will face similar problems.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> René
>
>
>

Re: Natural language version of activities in Shindig

Posted by Ryan Baxter <rb...@gmail.com>.
Hi Rene,

Can you provide a more concrete example of what you are trying to do?
I am having a hard time grasping your question.

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 7:47 AM, René Peinl <re...@hof-university.de> wrote:
> Dear Shindig community,
>
> we are facing a challange in our project, that we are using Shindig to
> collect activities from various systems and want to show activities coming
> from Shindig in every system. Currently Shindig only delivers the basic
> activity data like activity verb, object, target and so on. However, we’d
> like to show a natural language version of the activity in the activity
> stream (full sentence) which includes multi-lingual presentation of the
> contents. An example would be „<actor> has added a comment to <object>“ or
> „<actor> renamed document <object> into <target>“. The activitystrea.ms
> standard specifies the title attribute for that purpose.
>
>  <http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity>
> http://activitystrea.ms/specs/json/1.0/#activity
>
> In Shindig this attribute attribute is present and handled, but only in a
> pass-through manner.
>
>
>
> In order to avoid duplication of code, our natural choice would be to extend
> Shindig to generate the natural language version of the activities in the
> title attribute, if title is not present in the database. We would use files
> for translation and formatting templates (only string formatting, not
> colouring or layout), so that every administrator can influence both without
> any coding.
>
>
>
> Would this be an interesting extension for the Shindig base system and do
> you have any suggestions on how to integrate such an extension from an
> architecture point of view? We are e.g. not sure whether to deliver several
> translation in the same JSON as shown here
>
>
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLanguage
> Values>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-activitystreams-core-20141023/#naturalLanguageV
> alues
>
> or use a parameter from the client to choose the language.
>
> My guess would be that other people will face similar problems.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> René
>
>
>