Meta Content Framework (MCF) is a specification of a
content format A content format is an encoded format for converting a specific type of data to displayable information. Content formats are used in recording and transmission to prepare data for observation or interpretation. This includes both analog and digi ...
for structuring
metadata about
web site
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...
s and other
data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...
.
History
MCF was developed by
Ramanathan V. Guha at
Apple 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.
One application of MCF was
HotSauce, also developed by Guha while at Apple. It generated a
3D visualization
Visualization or visualisation may refer to:
* Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message
* Data visualization, the graphic representation of data
* Information visuali ...
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.
When the research project was discontinued, Guha left Apple for
Netscape, where, in collaboration with
Tim Bray
Timothy William Bray (born June 21, 1955) is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the original XML specification. He worked for Amazon Web Services from December 2014 until May 2020 w ...
, he adapted MCF to use
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
and created the first version of the
Resource Description Framework (RDF).
MCF format
An MCF file consists of one or more blocks, each corresponding to an entity. A block looks like this:
Node:
: ,
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:
* The identifier must not include a comma (
,) and must not be enclosed within double quotes.
* A common parsing failure is due to odd number of unescaped double quotes in text. For instance,
"foo bar" baz" needs to be
"foo bar\" baz".
* Commas within double quotes are not considered as value separators.
* Every entity has at least one property:
typeOf.
References
External links
MCF Tutorial(using XML syntax)
Guha MCF site
Knowledge representation
Apple Inc. software
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