+ +

What is the Ousía Framework?

+ +

+ The School of Athens by Raphael, 1509-1510 (Wikimedia Commons) + Ousía (οὐσία) is a term used by ancient greek philosophers to + describe The entirety of constant features, based on which + objects can be defined.

+ +

Let's start with the mandatory one-sentence sales-pitch answer to + the above question:

+ +

Ousía is a framework for representing documents in a + user extensible markup language, allowing transformation to a + a variety of output formats.

+ +

There you go!

+ +

Still confused and unsure what Ousía is and what you can do with + it? So are we. Read on to be enlightened!

+ +

What Ousía is not

+ +

Whenever we're asked what Ousía is, we have a hard time + giving a short and precise answer. This is not because Ousía is + overly complicated – the answer just very much depends on the + direction from which you look at Ousía.

+ +

To avoid any misconceptions, let's start answering the easier + question: What Ousia is not. If you don't know the + technologies we refer to here, you can safely skip these sections. +

+ +

Ousía is not LaTeX

+ + + +

You may have seen examples of documents written in the Ousía + Markup Language and thought “Well, that's just LaTeX!”. Rest + assured, Ousía is nothing like that. Yes, one of our formats looks a + little bit like TeX, but, you know, any resemblance to real persons, + living or dead, is purely coincidential.

+ +

TeX is a typesetter. It is a programming language aimed at + controlling how text is fitted onto a printed page, merely + automating a job that has been + done manually for + centuries. And LaTeX is a bunch of macros for authoring TeX + documents in a less awkward way.

+ +

Ousía knows nothing about typesetting. It doesn't even know what + medium your document will end up on. Ousía is for describing the + content of your document. Nothing more.

+ +

Ousía is not an editor

+ +

Ousía is not an editor application. Ousía documents are written + in one of two markup languages (OSML or OSXML) which + basically are plain text files. These files are then handed to an + application called ousia that + will parse them, check for errors and transform them to another + format.

+ +

There may be special editors that help you writing Ousía + documents or that use the underlying program library + libousia to provide a more convenient editing + experience, but this doesn't change the bigger picture.

+ +

Ousía does not replace Semantic Web technologies

+ Kizil Hauzen Bridge, Iran, 2013 (Wikimedia Commons) + We aim at building a bridge to end the seperation of the + ordinary user from the the power of the Semantic Web, there, + awaiting them on the other side.

+ + + +

It is possible (though unlikely, they are a rare species) + that you are a Semantic Web expert: You know all three dialects of + OWL, write your + love-letters in RDF + and transform vegetables into supper using XSLT, just to devour it with your + SPARQL powers.

+ +

In that case you'll very likely say: I have everything I need! + Leave my standards alone! They are mine, all mine! My precious!

+ +

Well, fear not! We're there to help. We too believe the Semantic + Web is great, but we want to allow everyone to write documents + with semantic markup. We've designed Ousía to be as simple as + possible for the end-user. It will be possible to export Ousía + ontologies and documents to all those shiny, complex, + incomprehensibly powerful W3C standards. Promised.

+ +

Semantic Markup unleashed

+ +

In this section we will skim over a few examples of how Ousía can + be used, giving you a quick impression.

+ +

Express what you mean

One aspect of Ousía is its document markup language. + It allows you to write the text of your document while attaching + additonal information to the text using special commands. +

+ +

Let's assume you wanted to write a book (e.g. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Samuel Langhorne Clemens alias Mark Twain). You could start writing it down like this:


+                THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
+                             by
+                         Mark Twain
+                 (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
+
+PREFACE
+
+Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred;
+one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys
+who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life;
+Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a
+combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew,
+and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.
+

+ +


+\import[ontology]{book} % We want to write a book
+\import[ontology]{novel} % We want to do some novel writing
+
+\begin{book}[lang=en]{The Adventures of Tom Sawyer}
+	% Add some meta-information about the book at hand
+	\begin{meta}
+		\author[realname]{
+			\name{
+				\first{Samuel}
+				\middle{Langhorne}
+				\last{Clemens}
+			}
+			\name[alias]{
+				\first{Mark}
+				\last{Twain}
+			}
+		}
+		\published{1876}
+	\end{meta}
+
+	% Define the characters that occur in the book -- we can
+	% later reference them by their name ("hashtag")
+	\begin{characters}
+		\def#hf{
+			\name{
+				\first{Huckleberry}
+				\first[short]{Huck}
+				\last{Finn}
+			}
+		}
+		\def#ts{
+			\name{
+				\first{Thomas}
+				\first[short]{Tom}
+				\last{Sawyer}
+			}
+		}
+	\end{characters}
+
+	% Start of the actual content -- we can annotate certain
+	% parts of the document to reference one of the characters
+	% defined above
+	\begin{preface}
+		Most of the adventures recorded in this book really
+		occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the
+		rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine.
+		::{hf}Huck Finn:: is drawn from life; ::{ts}Tom
+		Sawyer:: also, but not from an individual—he is a
+		combination of the characteristics of three boys whom
+		I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order
+		of architecture.
+	\end{preface}
+\end{book}
+