Onto Tracker

Onto Tracker

Manage projects according to an ontology.

Create an obsidian vault that tracks the contents of a folder on your computer. Files are categorized accrodign to a given ontology according to a set of user-defined rules. This content can then be parsed for tasks such as uploading content to a CMS (see some python scripts for this here).

Overview video

1. Usage

• Project settings
• Unpacking ontologies
• Creating freezes
• Ontology mapping

2. Roadmap
3. Acknowledgements

Usage

Project settings

Activate the plugin, then in the settings, give your project a title and set the source folder that contains all of the files you wish to track.

Then set an ontology file - here is an example of an ontology that is used to preserve electroacoustic music projects called Eulalie. Download the file here.

Unpacking ontologies

When the plugin is active, a menu will appear in Obsidian's main ribbon. You can click Unpack ontology... to get a better idea about how your ontology works.

You can set a name for the folder that will be created.

You will see that a folder called ontos will be created at the root of your vault. Here you will find your ontology that has been unpacked which you can view as needed.

Creating freezes

You can perform 'freezes' of the content in the source folder you're tracking. Click on the New freeze... button to get started.

You can give your freeze a name and a date.

Now a folder called freezes will be created at the root of your vault, and a file will be created for each file in the folder you are tracking.

The metadata of each file will give some basic information about the file.

The markdown content is intended to be used to take notes that give contextualising information about the file. Feel free to edit this however you feel fit.

A metadata file shall also be created giving information about the freeze.

Ontology mapping

Finally, you can automatically update each file's metadata according to your ontology. To do this, you will first need to create some rules (we call this a 'mapping').

Creating a mapping

Click on New mapping... to create a new mapping.

You can give your mapping a name.

A folder called mappings will have been created in the root of your vault. Here you can open the file called mime_types_mapping to create rules that will assign files to a certain class in your ontology according to file type.

The 6 basic mime types are already created, as well as an 'other' field. You can also add more types and subtypes which will replace main categories (fro example, you can set a rule for audio, and then another for audio/wav).

To create a rule, set the class name, a double equals, and then the index of the rule in the ontology (1-counting, as presented when unpacking an ontoilogy).

Mapping a freeze

Now that the mapping rules have been created, you can map the files in a freeze by clicking the Map... button.

Choose which freeze and which mapping you wish to use.

Observe now that the metadate of your freeze files will have been updated (and any notes you wrote in the markdown part of the file are retained).

Roadmap

• Rule creation for folder placement.
• Rule creation for file name parsing.
• Implement "other" mime type parsing.
• Eulalie default config.
• Main project record creation.
• Implement other ontology formats (currently works with heurist format ontologies).
• Prevent processing when process already in process.
• Move getFreezeFolderName to utils.

Acknowledgements

Created by Jacob Hart. This project was initially created for the archival work at Art Zoyd Studios. Avec le soutien de la Région Bretagne.