Meta Content Framework (MCF) is a specification of a content format for structuring metadata about web sites and other data.
MCF was developed by Ramanathan V. GuhaatApple Computer's Advanced Technology Group between 1995 and 1997. Rooted in knowledge-representation systems such as CycL, KRL, and KIF, it sought to describe objects, their attributes, and the relationships between them.[1]
One application of MCF was HotSauce, also developed by Guha while at Apple. It generated a 3D visualization of a web site's table of contents, based on MCF descriptions. By late 1996, a few hundred sites were creating MCF files and Apple HotSauce allowed users to browse these MCF representations in 3D.[1]
When the research project was discontinued, Guha left Apple for Netscape, where, in collaboration with Tim Bray, he adapted MCF to use XML[2][3] and created the first version of the Resource Description Framework (RDF).[4]
An MCF file consists of one or more blocks, each corresponding to an entity. A block looks like this:
Node: <identifier>
<property>: <value>, <value>
The identifier is a unique identifier for that entity (more on the scope of the identifier below) and is used to refer to that entity. The following lines each specify a property and one or more values, separated by commas. Each value can be a reference to another entity (via its identifier), a string (enclosed by double quotes) or a number. For example:
Node: Test1
typeOf: TestNode
child: Test2, Test3
name: "I am a test node"
itemCode: 42
Node: Test2
typeOf: TestNode
sibling: Test3
name: "I am another test node in a test world"
Node: Test3
typeOf: TestNode
sibling: Test2
name: "Just another test node in a test world"
NOTE:
,) and must not be enclosed within double quotes."foo bar" baz" needs to be "foo bar\" baz".typeOf. | This artificial intelligence-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
