RE: Response to the review comments of the Syntax document, Sections 3--8

Hello,

> ----------
> >@Vojtech, Section 3.5: We should perhaps make sure that 'annotating
> >ontologies' in this context means '...ontologies as wholes'. How
> >about using this extended formulation? Or, annotating individual
> >entities or axioms is not 'annotating ontologies' in the general
> >sense?
> 
> >I'm not sure I understand this comment. An ontology can be assigned
> >an annotation, just like any other entity can. I don't
> >understand what you mean with "annotating an ontology as a whole".
> >
> What I meant:
> 1) entities are parts of the ontology
> 2) so, annotating entities means annotating the ontology, in a sense?
> In the semantic annotation field, a document is seen as annotated if text
> fragments of it are annotated; it is not necessary to have annotations that
> pertain to the document as a whole.
> 

But we never said that the "annotates" is a transitive relation. Furthermore, I said "an ontology contains annotations"; hence, I'm
not really sure why this would be interpreted as annotating the parts of an ontology.

In any case, I don't mind making the text clearer. The problem is that "annotating an ontology as a whole" is unlikely to really be
crystal clear as well.

> >@Vojtech, Section 5: "annotation properties can be used to associate
> >nonlogical information..." (similarly in 3.5). I do not
> >strictly argue against such a shortcut in this spec... but just for
> >completeness, I expect annotations to be used for pretty
> >'logical' information as well - yet this information would not be
> >expressible in OWL and thus not exploitable by tools merely
> >relying on the DL semantics of OWL...
> >
> >The term "nonlogical" is inherited from knowledge representation: it
> >means that the information is interpreted outside logic. This,
> >of course, doesn't mean that the information itself is garbage; this
> >latter sense, I believe, would be denoted by the term
> >"illogical".
> 
> I did not mean 'logical' as 'not stupid'. My point was that the info in an
> annotation can indeed have semantics in some solid logical calculus (but
> different from the OWL species of DL) and be interpreted in an appropriate
> reasoner. Therefore, ideally, I would prefer something like "...not
> interpretable in the logical semantics of OWL". But if this sounds too
> verbose to you, I will not insist on it.
> 

True, this could be done; however, it is not done in OWL 2. Nevertheless, I understand that the term "nonlogical" may upset some
people, so I've just removed. The sentence afterwards already says that annotations do not have semantic meaning, so we are in the
clear.

> >@Vojtech, Section 5.6.2: 'Analogous' (see also para 2 of Sect.5) is
> >too vague a characterisation to me. Are blank nodes always
> >interpreted as anonymous individuals when RDF is interpreted using
> >the OWL semantics, or when aren't they?
> >
> >Anonymous individuals are always interpreted as blank nodes and, in
> >fact, anonymous individuals are mapped to blank nodes in the RDF
> >Mapping. Anonymous individuals, however, aren't blank nodes
> >themselves: in RDF, blank nodes can occur in the schema part as
> >well.
> >Therefore, "analogous" here should be interpreted as "like".
> 
> Would thus harm to straightforwardly say "Anonymous individuals are
> interpreted as blank nodes in RDF"?
> 

But we say here more than how they are interpreted. They are *analogous* to blank nodes in the sense that they are local to the
ontology they occur in. This is not just a semantic notion.



Thanks again!

Regards,

	Boris

Received on Saturday, 13 September 2008 21:32:58 UTC