[doap-interest] new to doap..

[Graham Seaman]

Hi,

I run a mini-freshmeat style site, opencollector.org. It's badly in
need of a site rewrite, and I thought while I did it I'd try to 
incorporate doap. A couple of years ago I had a go with a home-grown
xml/schema based project description format but gave up before completion
(it started growing in complexity beyond all reason...). This time
it would be nice to do it with a standard(ish) format others are going
to be using as well!

There are a number of issues I need to sort out before starting; I
wondered if anyone might have any comments on these? I don't have any
practical rdf experience, the answers may be obvious to anyone who has!

opencollector.org specialises in EDA (Electronic Design Automation) 
software and in free hardware designs (which often have associated
firmware, software etc)

1. Some of my data comes from Freshmeat. I would like to be able to import
Freshmeat data directly. Same with sourceforge. Some in the future will
hopefully come from doap files in general circulation. Part of taking in
this data is just mechanical munging; but part of it needs human
intervention. For my data to be useful, programs have to be classified
in several dimensions: type of electronics (analog, digital..), type
of application (robotics, video..), type of use (simulation, synthesis...)
etc.
Since I know in advance that all programs will be electronics-related,
the classification is much more fine-grained than sourceforge's etc.
What's the best way to handle this kind of thing - everybody makes their
own classification but doesn't export it in doap? Local extension to doap? 

2. As well as pure EDA software, I list hardware designs, and 'packages' -
combinations of interdependent hardware and software. Hardware designs
have some features in common with software, and some different. What's the
best way to incorporate this kind of additional info? Is there anything to
be gained by trying to forcefit it into the doap format, or am I better
off saying 'that's outside doap - create another format for it'.

3. Internationalisation: someone a while ago wanted to create a Russian
version of this site, and I took so long to do anything I blew it. This
time round I'd like to be ready in advance, with hooks for translation of
descriptions etc in multiple languages/charsets. As I read it, doap
already allows for this; am I right?

Any advice at all appreciated :-)

Graham