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kio_mrml and mrml_part
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Carsten Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@kde.org> 2001/05/03
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These are the sources for an mrml kioslave and an accompanying KPart.
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How does it work in Konqueror?
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==============================
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For now, the MrmlPart is rather a proof of concept, than a full blown
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MRML client.
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You can start the MrmlPart by entering an appropriate URL into Konqueror,
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e.g. mrml://user:pass@host.domain:port
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user, pass and domain are optional, so if you're running a server locally
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yourself, you can enter mrml://localhost to make Konqueror show the
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MrmlPart. If you don't have a running GIFT-server, you can try out
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mrml://viper.unige.ch:12790 as an example. Then, Konqueror will try to
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connect the server at the given URL and show you a list of
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image-collections the server has available. You can specify the number
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of images a query should return and you can hit the Search-button
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to actually start the query. If you don't give an image as example for
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the query, it will return random images from the collection.
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Shortly after hitting the Search-button, you will see a list of images
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as thumbnails. Below every image is a small rectangle showing the
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similarity of the image with the example image(s). The longer the
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rectangle, the better the match.
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Even easier than entering the mrml URL is right-clicking on an image
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in Konqueror and selecting "Search for similar images..." in the context
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menu. This will open up a new Konqueror window where the query will start
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automatically. By default, this will try to contact a local server, i.e
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mrml://localhost. You can configure different servers in the KControl
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Module (System -> Advanced Search). The last chosen server will be used
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for those queries.
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Note that a remote server surely can't access an image from your home
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direcory though. I have to think a little bit about the usability of
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this :) The greatest use of this is when you've indexed your files
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and running an own GIFT server anyway. Ideally, the server could be
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started on demand, when a query comes up.
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MrmlPart:
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=========
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This KPart makes use of the mrml ioslave to provide a full MRML
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client. MRML, Multimedia Retrieval Markup Language (see
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http://www.mrml.net) is a means to query CBIR (Content Based Image
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Retrieval) servers. An OpenSource server is the GIFT (GNU Image
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Finding Tool), see www.mrml.net for downloading the GIFT.
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You can query for images by choosing one or more "example" images.
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The server will search for images that have similarities to the
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example(s) you gave. Queries can be refined by specifying relevance,
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i.e. by including and excluding parts of the previous search result.
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mrml ioslave:
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=============
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Basically this is not much more than a slave for asynchronous
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transport of "data". With the URL, you can specify the user, password
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and port, as well as the url of the server to connect to.
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The data exchange of client <-> slave is done via metaData, with an
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"mrml_data" key. The data that the slave sends to the client is sent
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in one big chunk, after all the data has arrived at the slave. This
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could be made configurable later.
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With a little tuning, one could turn this into a generic slave
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which can transport any kind of data.
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[mrmlsearch]
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This little baby is called from Konqueror's popupmenu, when you hit
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"Search for similar images...". This program simply gets the URLs
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from Konqueror and creates a query of the form
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mrml://host.com/?relevant=url1;url2;url3;url4....
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It will use the currently selected host in the KControl module
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System -> Advanced Search to perform the query.
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mrmlsearch will then invoke "kfmclient openURL query" to start open
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a new Konqueror window and perform the query.
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Thanks go to Wolfgang M<>ller <Wolfgang.Mueller@cui.unige.ch> for his
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work on the GIFT and for making me write this frontend :) I really
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had a WOW-effect about the GIFT, when MrmlPart returned the first
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query results.
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New versions of this package can be found at
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http://devel-home.kde.org/~pfeiffer/kmrml/
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See http://www.mrml.net for downloading the GIFT and more information.
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Have fun,
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Carsten Pfeiffer
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