Re: Annotation entailment!

Summary: why is this an issue? What are you trying to annotate, and why? 
Why are you using this mechanism?

======================


The question is why are you using rdfs:label or eg:lastModifiedOn or 
whatever rather than <!--  XML Comments -->.

If you want an annotation that is entirely invisible, except in an 
editor, the XML specification provides that mechanism:
<!--

-->

If you use some other mechanism, then it is in order to get additional 
functionality.

The functionality that OWL DL annotations provide is:
- the annotation is part of the RDF graph
- some basic semantics is provided.
- the annotation is regarded as an annotation of the interpretation of 
the items in the graph, rather than an annotation of the graph syntax.


i.e.

There is a mechanism to annotate the XML syntax: XML comments.

There is a mechanism to annotate the individuals properties and classes 
in the ontology.

There is no mechanism to annotate the graph syntax.

===

If a mechanism for annotating the graph syntax is desired, one method 
would be to create a new annotation property eg:annotatedGraph that 
takes an RDF/XML literal as its object.

If your ontology is a set of triples O with name U, and O includes
U rdf:type owl:Ontology

then set

O' = O union
{ U eg:annotatedGraph X^rdf:XMLLiteral }

where X is a serialization of O, including appropriate XML comments.

This provides a simple mechanism allowing annotations of the graph as a 
graph, (i.e. reading in, and writing it out does not loose the comments, 
but the comments have [no/vanishing little] semantic force).

Jeremy
















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