![[Pasted image 20230717184233.png]] Photo by [Jessica Lee](https://unsplash.com/@jaely368?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@jaely368?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) We introduced concepts and philosophy behind #InfoSymbolism at previous articles "[[InfoSymbolism - The Missing Piece]]" and "[[InfoSymbolism is the universal language]]". Now is the time to shift our discussion towards practical implementation. This is a first post answering questions "How to store symbols?" and "How to name symbols" ready for InfoSymbolism usage. ## How to store symbols Fundamentally, we can store symbols anywhere - as long as they are reference-able / reachable by symbol consumer via usually well defined API structure to easily access and retrieve particular symbol file. Any storage system or platform with reasonably fast response time is applicable, however the suggestion is to use version control environments such as box, dropbox, onedrive, google drive, workdocs, sharepoint and many more. Diagram below show simplified suggested directory structure, taking into the consideration limited amount of SymbolSets, their categories and symbols positioned with particular SymbolSetCategory. ![[Pasted image 20230709100605.png|Figure1: InfoSymbolism Hierarchy]] There are two lists (manifests) situated within the structure: SymbolSet.xml and SymbolSetID.xml. The extension "xml" is just an example of used structure, we can use any widely used format (json, yaml) to achieve same results. Additionally, these manifests are serving off-line purpose (no active database or no connection to MetaX repository). It means, same content is stored inside semantically referenced database to correctly link identified entities with their visual representation enable. InfoSymbolism supported on database level is important for quick search and retrieval of symbols in dependency of semantical IDs. ### SymbolSet Is a list of all SymbolSet-s categorized by version and author with their reference-able URLs. ![[Pasted image 20230709100627.png|Figure 2: SymbolSet]] ### SymbolSetID Is a list of all Symbols within the specific SymbolSet categorized by SymbolCategory, ID and reference-able URL. ![[Pasted image 20230709100645.png|Figure 3: SymbolSetID]] ## How to name symbols Eventually all symbols should have a different name, however they also have to have a unique name within the file structure to prevent conflicts at file level (not just at the source , but also at the target - uploaded symbols to consumers). We also think, that it should be beneficial to uniquely identify symbols across all distributions (storage / repository sites) and their symbol sets and categories. ![[Pasted image 20230709100700.png|Figure 4: InfoSymbolism: Naming Convention]] You can certainly use any kind of symbol formats (JPG, PNG and many more), our suggestions is to select vector based formats to easily scale picture size across all devices without the loss of a clean interpretation. The SVG [1] format (our example above) is one of the formats suitable a supported across all devices today. ## References [1] Wikipedia; Definitions ## Related to [[InfoSymbolism - The Missing Piece]]