Here's a short note for the purpose of Wondering Aloud. I wonder how hard it would be to manage canonical facts from stories using specialised software?

What I'm envisioning is some sort of an expert system, though I'm a little bit hesitant to use the current crop of languages that seem to be cropping up in the very cursory searches. They all seem to use rather complex forms of definition - yeah, sorry, it's 2008 and artificial intelligence is still hard. What I'm looking for would be some sort of a simple language to tie up entities to each other and specific events, dates and locations.

It would be quite simple to just read stories, and collect facts together. For example, one could read "The Carnival Wolves", and come up with...

"Frevelthan Athelevathan is a male elf. Thelivna Athelevathan is a female elf. Frevelthan Athelevathan and Thelivna Athelevathan are married and live in Lethlei-Yssrai-Carghven, a village in the duchy of Nothross, which is located in the kingdom of Furinel."

or,

"An autumn festival was held celebrating the liberation of the city of Nothross in 1.IX.630 AR ('first party since reclaiming Nothross, two years ago, celebrating autumn's coming'). Thelivna Athelevathan was among the attendees."

This sort of system would rule.