[kepler-dev] Re: How to install new actors

[Shawn Bowers]

Here are the directions ...


All of the files mentioned below are in the folder: 
\kepler\configs\ptolemy\configs\kepler\

Also, to have an actor show up in the actor lib, it must be annotated 
with a class.


1. First, you need to place the MoML for your actor in the 
basicKeplerActorLibrary.xml, and assign it an LSID. The LSID is assigned 
via the entityID property. Here is an example for the constant actor:

   <entity name="Constant" class="ptolemy.actor.lib.Const">
     <property name="entityId"
               class="org.ecoinformatics.seek.util.NamedObjId"
               value="urn:lsid:ecoinformatics.org:kepler.1.1"/>
   </entity>


2. The next step is to annotate the actor with a class from the actor 
library ontology.  The ontology is found in ontology.owl, which contains 
the classnames, the hierarchy, and so on.  The file annotations.owl is 
where you stick the annotation.  Here is the example for the above actor:

   <!-- Constant -->
   <asc:Annotation rdf:ID="A1.1">
     <asc:lsid>urn:lsid:ecoinformatics.org:SMS:A1:1</asc:lsid>
     <asc:annotates>
       <asc:ItemTag>
         <rdf:type rdf:resource="&ont;ConstantActor"/>
         <asc:taggedItem>
           <asc:Actor>
             <asc:lsid>urn:lsid:ecoinformatics.org:kepler.1.1</asc:lsid>
          </asc:Actor>
         </asc:taggedItem>
       </asc:ItemTag>
     </asc:annotates>
   </asc:Annotation>

This set of xml tags says the following: We are defining an annotation 
(which has it's own lsid -- not currently used), and the annotation 
annotates an "itemTag". The itemTag is a tag (or pointer) to the actor 
with the lsid "urn:lsid:ecoinformatics.org:kepler.1.1".  Here, the 
annotation states that the actor is an instance of the Ontology Class 
"ConstantActor", which you can find in ontology.owl. You can assign 
multiple classes by having multiple <rdf:type> tags.

That is all you have to do. ;-)

Hopefully soon (i.e., next week), we'll have at least a rudimentary 
kepler interface for doing all of this programmatically. Our use case is 
for Ilkay's web harvester.


Shawn


Dan Higgins wrote:
> Shawn,
>    I want to install and test a new actor I am working on. What are the 
> files that I need to modify to make a new actor appear in the tree? Even 
> a brief summary without all the details would be useful. (At this point, 
> I don't care if it is in the ontology; I just want it to show up in the 
> tree.)
> 
> Dan
>