[kepler-dev] "getting started" questions

[Chad Berkley]

Hi Ken,

Were you running off of a kepler-1.0 release checked out from SVN or one 
you downloaded (with and installer) from the web?  In any case, it's 
weird that you didn't have those files unless maybe the checkout failed 
half way through or something.

We're not currently doing any reasoning with the actor library 
ontologies, but we're laying the groundwork for kepler to be able to 
suggest possible workflow component connections between actors and to do 
semantic type checking between inputs and outputs.  Some of this 
functionality has been implemented as prototypes, though I'm not sure 
how much (if any) of it currently works.

The plan originally was to let different domains classify their actors 
the way that made sense to them in the actor library.  Since we haven't 
had the tools to easily create the ontologies required, it's been hard 
to get people to actually build new classifications.  The 4 ontologies 
currently in kepler will stay and possibly more will be added.  I could 
also see in the future that the ontologies themselves could be uploaded 
to the component repository and shared amongst users.  I don't think 
there are any concrete plans for that though.

We were trying to shoot for the middle of June for the 2.0 release, but 
it's probably not going to happen as we envisioned it.  I'm guessing the 
end of the summer or fall at this point, however, we should have some 
alpha and beta releases sooner.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

chad


Kenneth Jones wrote:
> Chad,
> 
> Thanks for the timely and detailed response.
> 
> None of the actors display icons and the reason seems to be that I don't 
> have a svgIconDefaults.properties file in any of the projects in my 
> workspace.  I see that you have created a newer, more detailed, set of 
> build instructions and pointed to them in the most recent Kepler 
> Newsletter.  I think I'll wipe out my current workspace and start again 
> from scratch using the most current build instructions.  That may do the 
> trick.
> 
> The fact that you are using OWL to categorize your actors opens up some 
> interesting possibilities.  Are you doing any reasoning over these 
> categories, or do you plan to do so?  Also, are there any plans to use 
> OWL to define the Kepler data type hierarchy?  Will the simpler method 
> of creating actor categories be built on top of this OWL ontology or are 
> you planning to remove the ontology and replacing it with something else?
> 
> One more question -- do you have a tentative release date for version 2.0?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- Ken
> 
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Chad Berkley <berkley at nceas.ucsb.edu 
> <mailto:berkley at nceas.ucsb.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi Ken,
> 
>     See my responses below.
> 
> 
>     Kenneth Jones wrote:
> 
>         I would like to build a custom version of Kepler.  I have used
>         the Kepler build system (which is really great, btw) to download
>         the latest version from the svn repository and I've followed
>         your tutorial and successfully built the "Hello World" actor.  I
>         now have four packages in my workspace:
> 
>         hello-world
>         kepler-1.0
>         kepler-1.0-jar-tag
>         loader-for-kepler-1.0
> 
>         Everything seems to work just fine except for one thing -- the
>         actors don't display icons.  They just show up as boxes with
>         black borders and white interiors.  Any idea what I did wrong
>         and how to go about fixing it?
> 
> 
>     Are you talking about the helloWorld actor or all of the actors in
>     the actor library?  You can set icons in the file
>     kepler-1.0/kepler-1.0-jar-tag/configs/ptolemy/configs/kepler/uiSVGIconMappingsByClass.properties
> 
>     You just need to provide the class name and the SVG icon you want to
>     use.  You can also assign icons by LSID (if you have given your
>     actor a unique LSID) with the file
>     uiSVGIconMappingsByLSID.properties in the same directory.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>         One more question: I only want to display a subset of the Kepler
>         actors (and some others that I will create) and organize them in
>         a taxonomy that is different from the default Kepler taxonomy.
>          How do I go about creating a custom taxonomy, filled with
>         custom sets of actors and display it in the Components tab of
>         the Components and Data View of Vergil?
> 
> 
>     We're currently in the process of making this easier, however it is
>     currently not an easy thing to do (especially in Kepler 1.0).  The
>     actor library is laid out using an ontology of the actors.  You can
>     find the current ontologies in
>     kepler-1.0/kepler-1.0-jar-tag/configs/ptolemy/configs/kepler/ontologies
> 
>     The ontology itself defines the categories into which the actors are
>     placed.  Each actor then gives itself one or more semantic types
>     which are defined in the ontology.  When the actor library is
>     rendered, the actors are then placed into the categories for which
>     they have a type defined.
> 
>     In order for you to make your own classification, you would need to
>     create your own OWL ontology, then add semantic types to the actors
>     you want to categorize that link into your custom ontology.
> 
>     Like I said, we're in the process of making this easier in the
>     future Kepler 2.0 (or whatever the version turns out to be).  Let me
>     know if you want further details.
> 
>     Thanks,
>     chad
> 
>