From 0296c1e3ea8de05faae909ec9a21fb7ec5b723b1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Claudio Sacerdoti Coen Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 17:20:05 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] The first MOWGLI paper. Many many others will follow. --- helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/index.xml | 1 + .../home/xml/publications/mowgli/crimea.xml | 410 ++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 411 insertions(+) create mode 100644 helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/mowgli/crimea.xml diff --git a/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/index.xml b/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/index.xml index 6de834a71..677cd50c8 100644 --- a/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/index.xml +++ b/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/index.xml @@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ + diff --git a/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/mowgli/crimea.xml b/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/mowgli/crimea.xml new file mode 100644 index 000000000..104cf586b --- /dev/null +++ b/helm/mowgli/home/xml/publications/mowgli/crimea.xml @@ -0,0 +1,410 @@ + + + MOWGLI - A New Approach for the Content Description in Digital + Documents + + + +

MOWGLI - A New Approach for the Content Description in Digital Documents

+ +

Andrea Asperti, University of Bologna, and Bernd Wegner, TU Berlin

+ + +

Abstract:

+ +
+

The acronym MOWGLI stands for "Mathematics On the Web: Get it by Logic and +Interfaces". MOWGLI is an European Project founded by the European Community +in the ``Information Society Technologies'' (IST) Programme. The partners are +the University of Bologna, INRIA (Rocquencourt), the German Research Centre +for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI, Saarbruecken), the Katholieke Universiteit +Nijmegen, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein +Institute, Golm), Trusted Logic (Paris) and TU Berlin.

+ +

The aim of the project is the study and the development of a technological +infrastructure for the creation and maintenance of a virtual, distributed, +hypertextual library of mathematical knowledge based on a content description +of the information. Currently, almost all mathematical documents available on +the Web are marked up only for presentation, severely crippling the +potentialities for automation, interoperability, sophisticated searching +mechanisms, intelligent applications, transformation and processing. The goal +of MOWGLI is to overcome these limitations, passing from a machine-readable to +a machine-understandable representation of the information, and developing the +technological infrastructure for its exploitation.

+ +

The project deals with problems traditionally belonging to different +scientific communities: digital libraries, Web publishing, automation of +mathematics and computer aided reasoning. Any serious solution to the complex +problem of mathematical knowledge management needs a co-ordinated effort of +all these groups and a synergy of their different expertise. MOWGLI attempts +to build a solid co-operation environment between these communities. The +current paper will concentrate on the aspects related to digital libraries.

+
+ + +

1. Aims and mission of MOWGLI

+ +

After a ten years period of electronic publishing in mathematics we are still +confronted with slightly enhanced electronic versions of printed publications. +Almost all mathematical documents available on the Web are marked up only for +presentation, if such an enhancement is available at all. Only a minority of +documents try to care about some of the potentialities for automation, +interoperability, sophisticated searching mechanisms, intelligent +applications, transformation and processing. But these approaches could be +considered as first preliminary steps towards an electronic document providing +all these facilities. Hence, the goal of MOWGLI is to overcome these +limitations, passing form a machine-readable to a machine-understandable +representation of the information, and developing the technological +infrastructure for its exploitation.

+ +

In order to reach this goal MOWGLI has to deal with problems traditionally +belonging to different scientific communities: digital libraries, Web +publishing, automation of mathematics and computer aided reasoning. To our +knowledge, MOWGLI is the first attempt to build a solid co-operation +environment between these communities. In principle, any serious approach for +providing good tools for mathematical knowledge management needs a +co-ordinated effort of several partners from the above mentioned communities +and a synergy of +their different expertise. The choice of partners for the took this condition +into account, as can be seen below.

+ +

The goals of MOWGLI largely overlap with the aims of the so called "Semantic +Web" [14]. +Associating meaning with content or establishing a layer of machine +understandable data will allow automated agents, sophisticated search engines +and interoperable services and will enable higher degree of automation and +more intelligent applications. The ultimate goal of the Semantic Web is to +allow machines to share and exploit knowledge in the Web way, i.e. without +central authority, with few basic rules, in a scalable, adaptable, extensible +manner. However, the actual development of the Semantic Web and its +technologies has been hindered so far by the lack of large scale, distributed +repositories of structured, content oriented information. The case of +mathematical knowledge, the most rigorous and condensed form of knowledge, is +paradigmatic. The World Wide Web is already now the largest single resource of +mathematical knowledge, and its importance hopefully be increased by the +emerging display technologies like MathML.

+ +

Machine understandable information will make possible to offer added-value +services like: +

    +
  • Preservation of the real informative content in a highly structured and + machine understandable format, suitable for transformation, automatic + elaboration and processing.
  • +
  • Cut and paste on the level of computation (take the output from a Web + search engine and paste it into a computer algebra system).
  • +
  • Automatic proof checking of published proofs.
  • +
  • Semantic search for mathematical concepts (rather than keywords).
  • +
  • Indexing and Classification.
  • +
+

+ +

Due to its rich notational, logical and semantic structure, mathematical +knowledge is a main case study for the development of the new generation of +semantic Web systems. The aim of the MOWGLI project is both to help in this +process, as well as pave the way towards a really useful virtual, distributed, +hyper-textual resource for the working mathematician, scientist or engineer.

+ + +

2. Standards and Tools

+ +

Current standards for electronic publishing in mathematics are mainly +presentation oriented. New tools for the management and publishing of +mathematical documents are in development like MathML +[3], OpenMath, OMDoc +([17],[18]) and integrated with different +XML technology [7] (XSLT [8], RDF +[4], [5], SOAP [6], ...). +All these languages cover different and orthogonal +aspects of the information and its management; our aim is not to propose a new +standard, but to study and to develop the technological infrastructure +required for taking advantage of the potentialities of all of current +standards and those which are likely to be established in the near future.

+ +

MOWGLI makes an essential use of standard XML technology and aspires to +become an example of ``best practice'' in its use, and a pioneering leading +project in the new area of the Semantic Web [12]. +In particular, the potentialities of +XML will be deeply explored in the following directions: +

    +
  • Publishing. XML offers sophisticated publishing technologies (Stylesheets, + MathML, SVG, etc.) which can be profitably used to solve, in a standard way, + the annoying notational problems that traditionally afflict content based and + machine-understandable encodings of the information.
  • +
  • Searching and Retrieving. Metadata will play a major role in MOWGLI. New + W3C languages such as the Resource Description Framework or XML Query are + likely to produce major innovative solutions in this field.
  • +
  • Interoperability. Disposing of a common, machine understandable layer is a + major and essential step in this direction.
  • +
  • Distribution. All XML technology is finally aimed to the access of the Web + as a single, distributed resource, with no central authority and few, simple + rules.
  • +
+ +

MathML [3], introducing for the first time a content markup +layer in parallel +with a presentational one, has indubitably been a pioneering project towards +the mining of the mathematical treasure available on the web. Still, its +limitations are evident as well: +

    +
  • MathML is merely focused on mathematical expressions. However, in order to +bring the idea of a Semantic Web of Mathematics to its full potentialities, +other layers of mathematical information must be considered as well. In +particular, we need a clean, microscopic description of proofs, a markup for +mathematichal "objects" (Theorems, Lemmas, Corollaries, Examples, etc.), a +markup for "structured collections" of these objects (Documents, Theories, +etc.), possibly "functors" between these collections, and finally a good +"metadata" layer.
  • +
  • MathML is just an (important) piece in a much wider technological puzzle. +Passing from content to a good presentational format requires sophisticated +operations; on the other side, these transformations are themselves a basic +component of the whole mathematical knowledge (like mathematical fonts). XSLT +[8] provides here the right technology, opening the way to +the creation of well maintained and documented libraries of mathematical +stylesheets [11].
  • +
+

+ +

Similarly, the creation and maintenance of the library as a distributed +repository, and the crucial aspect of managing the information in the ``web +way'' requires a light but powerful communication protocol, overcoming some of +the limitations of HTTP (SOAP [6] looks as a promising +solution).

+ +

Metadata will eventually require a fairly sophisticated model, much beyond +what is currently offered by typical metadata models as the Dublin-Core system +[1]. Here, RDF (Resource Description Framework) +([4], [5]) looks as the right +framework for developing the model, providing a general architectural model +for expressing metadata and a precise syntax for the encoding and interchange +of these metadata over the Web.

+ +

The fact of encoding also the microscopic, logical level of mathematics opens +the possibility to have completely formalised subsystems of the library +([9],[10]), which could be checked +automatically by standard tools for the +automation of formal reasoning and the mechanisation of mathematics (proof +assistants and logical frameworks +([15],[16]). At the same time, any of these +tools could be used as an authoring system for documents of the library, by +simply exporting their internal libraries into XML, and using stylesheets to +transform the output into a standard, machine-understandable representation, +such as MathML content markup or OpenMath. In MOWGLI we shall use the COQ +Proof Assistant of INRIA [13] as a paradigmatic example of +these applications.

+ +

An alternative route for the creation of content-based mathematical +information from standard digital repositories by means of a suitable +LaTeX-based authoring system will be explored by the Albert Einstein +Institute. They publish the "Living Reviews in Relativity" +[2], a solely +electronic journal on the Web, which provides refereed, regularly updated +review articles on all areas of gravitational physics. AEI will develop a +LaTeX-based authoring tool interfacing with MOWGLI, and serve as a showcase to +demonstrate how content-mark-up in mathematics improves the usability and +information depth of electronic science journals.

+ + +

3. A minimal technological infrastructure

+ +

It is clear that the creation and maintenance of large repositories of +content-based mathematical knowledge can only be conceived as a cooperative +and distributed process, comprising not only the creation of documents, but +also libraries of notational rules, metadata and management tools. The crucial +point is to build a minimal infrastructure to start up this process, so that +more and more tools can be added by interested parties. All these +considerations lead to two requirements for the developments in MOWGLI: +

    +
  • Information must be accessible with few basic rules an no central + authority (the web way).
  • +
  • Make extensive use of standard XML technology and tools, even when it would + be easier or more efficient just to develop an ad-hoc solution.
  • +
+

+ +

In this way, we put no barrier to third party development and, every time a +standard technology or tool is improved, we can simply benefit of the new +implementation with minimal effort.

+ +

The MOWGLI architecture is essentially based on three components, which are +distribution sites, standard browsers and plug-outs, and active components, +such as XSLT processors, to elaborate the information. Distribution sites are +simply HTTP and FTP servers, widespread throughout the world; user browsers +are HTTP clients and run on the user host. We do not require any other +components to run on a specific host. Active components must provide answers +to browsers, requiring an HTTP server interface; they must also ask data to +distribution sites, acting as HTTP clients. Hence, MOWGLI is essentially +conceived as an HTTP pipeline.

+ +

The module client of the distribution sites is the "getter", which maps URIs +to URLs and hence documents, offering functionalities similar to the APT +packet management system +(http://www.debian.org).

+ +

The main active component is the XSLT stylesheet manager, whose typical +functionality is the application of a list of stylesheets (each one with the +respective list of parameters) to a document. However, other components may be +added in a completely modular way. This is exactly the content-based +architectural design of future web system enabled by XML technology.

+ + +

4. The contributions from the participants

+ +

The concrete background for the work in MOWGLI is represented by the +activities at the participating institutions. Though details could easily be +obtained from the MOWGLI web-page +(http://mowgli.cs.unibo.it) some short +remarks on this background should be made here.

+ +

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Bologna is the only +educational institution in Italy to be affiliated to W3C. They care about the +coordination of the project. The HELM project (Hypertextual Electronic Library +of Mathematics, +http://www.cs.unibo.it/helm, see also +[12]) is active in +Bologna since 1999. It is one of the systems of reference mentioned in the +previous section.

+ +

INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique) is a +French institution located in Rocquencourt. They pursue two projects of +importance for MOWGLI: the Lemme project, introducing and developing formal +methods for use in writing scientific computing software, and the LogiCal +project, which developed the Coq proof assistant (see +[13]).

+ +

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is based in +Kaiserslautern and Saarbruecken. Its main mission is technology transfer, i.e. +to move innovations in Artificial Intelligence from the lab to the market +place. Its main MOWGLI-related prototypical product so far has been the +Web-based learning environment ActiveMath that integrates several external services.

+ +

The Subfaculteit Informatica of Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen hosts a +broad experience in logic, formal methods and theorem proving. They are +involved in several research activities in this domain as the EC sponsored +Network "TYPES", the FTA project (Fundamental Theorem of Algebra), the EC +Working group Calculemus which also deals with OpenMath et al.

+ +

The role of the Albert Einstein Institute (MPG, Golm) near Potsdam has been +described above already. They provide a test bed with the Living Reviews which +will represent the important link to the domain of mathematical publishing. +This also is the main concern of the partner TU Berlin which is formally +associated to AEI caring about the exploitation and information dissemination +for MOWGLI.

+ +

Trusted Logic makes the group complete. This is a French start-up company, +which offers a wide range of efficient and secure solutions of smart cards and +terminals in a wide range of areas. Their development methodology includes a +permanent concern of quality and security aspects.

+ +

As it is common for projects like MOWGLI the cooperation between the partners +is regulated by workpackages and a time schedule for the deliveries. But the +project started formally in March 2002. Hence these things are still theory, +and it will be subject of the next report on MOWGLI to describe, how theory +came into practise.

+ + +

BIBLIOGRAPHY

+ +
+
[1]
+
The Dublin Core Metadata Inititiative. http://purl.org/dc/
+ +
[2]
+
Living Reviews in Relativity. + http://www.livingreviews.org.
+ +
[3]
+
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) 2.0 W3C Recommendation, 21 February +2001. http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/. +
+ +
[4]
+
Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification, W3C +Recommendation 22 February 1999. + /http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/
+ +
[5]
+
Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema Specification 1.0, W3C + Candidate Recommendation 27 March 2000. + http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
+ +
[6]
+
SOAP Version 1.2 Part 0: Primer. W3C Working Draft 17 December 2001. + http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-part0-20011217.
+ +
[7]
+
Extensible Markup Language (XML) Specification. Version 1.0. W3C + Recommendation, 10 February 1998. + http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml +
+ +
[8]
+
XSL Transformations (XSLT). Version 1.0, W3C Recommendation, 16 November + 1999. http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt.
+ +
[9]
+
Asperti, A.; Padovani, L.; Sacerdoti Coen C.; Schena, I.: Formal +Mathematics in MathML. Proceedings of the First International Conference on +MathML and Math on the Web, October 20-21 2000, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
+ +
[10]
+
Asperti, A.; Padovani, L.; Sacerdoti Coen, C.; Schena, I.: Formal +Mathematics on the Web. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on +Libraries and Associations in the Transient World: New Technologies and New +Forms of Cooperation, June 9-17, 2001, Sudak, Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine.
+ +
[11]
+
Asperti, A.; Padovani, L.; Sacerdoti Coen, C.; Schena, I.: XML, +Stylesheets and the re-mathematization of Formal Content. Proceedings of +Extreme Markup Languages 2001 Conference, August 12-17, 2001, Montreal, Canada.
+ +
[12]
+
Asperti, A.; Padovani, L.; Sacerdoti Coen, C.; Schena, I.: HELM and the +semantic Math-Web. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Theorem +Proving in Higher Order Logics (TPHOLS 2001), 3-6 September 2001, +Edinburgh, Scotland.
+ +
[13]
+
B. Barras et al.:The Coq Proof Assistant Reference Manual, version 6.3.1, + http://pauillac.inria.fr/coq
+ +
[14]
+
Tim Berner's Lee: The Semantic Web. W3C Architecture Note, 1998.
+ +
[15]
+
G. Huet, G. Plotkin (eds): Logical Frameworks. Cambridge University
+Press. 1991. + +
[16]
+
G. Huet, G. Plotkin (eds): Logical Environments. Cambridge University +Press. 1993.
+ +
[17]
+
Kohlase, M.: OMDoc: Towards an Internet Standard for the Administration, +Distribution and Teaching of mathematical Knowledge. Proceedings of Artificial +Intelligence and Symbolic Computation, Springer LNAI, 2000.
+ +
[18]
+
Kohlase, M.: OMDoc: An Infrastructure for OpenMath Content Dictionary +Information. Bulletin of the ACM Special Interest Group for Algorithmic +Mathematics SIGSAM, 2000.
+
+ +

+Prof. Dr. Andrea Asperti
+Dipartimento di Scienze dell Informazione
+Universita degli Studii di Bologna
+Via di mura Anteo Zamboni VII
+I - 40127 Bologna
+Italy +

+ +

+Prof. Dr. Bernd Wegner
+Fakultaet II, Institut fuer Mathematik
+TU Berlin, Sekr. MA 8-1
+Strasse des 17. Juni 135
+D - 10623 Berlin
+Germany +

+ + -- 2.39.2