Re: [ALL] editors draft of simple part-whole note ready for review

Bill

Many thanks.  I'll clean up the typos, missing bits etc. mentioned.  Hopefully without adding too
many new ones.  Also now that we have agreed the examples, I'll generate all the syntaxes and
complete code etc. to go along with it.

On the substantive issues.

*    partOf_directly vs directPartOf.  In practice for readability in systems, especially when there
are several variants of partOf - to be discussed in a later note - putting the "direct" first makes
it harder to read, especially if things start to run off the edges of windows etc. Also if there are
other transitive relations where one wants to have "direct" subproperties, it means they are harder
to tell apart.  I know this is pragmatic rather than principled, but I think it is a real
consideration.

* Page 8. "Issue of locus"/"distinguishing between kindOf and partOf.  I am not sure what more to
say here. Suggestions welcome.

*  Reflexive_parts and the comments on the partOf relation being reflexive.  For better or for
worse, the classic mereologic axioms are formulated as reflexivity, transitivity, and antisymmetry.
We might add a caveat that they run counter to common usage in some cases, but I think we must
reference what is standard practice for a large segment of the community.  We might also put a note
on that subrelations of partOf which satisfy only some of these properties will be discussed in a
future "less simple" note on part-whole relations.

*    On deriving hasPart from isPartOf or vice versa.  It is true that this can be done, but the
semantics are tricky.  It does not follow from all As are parts of some B that all Bs have parts
some A - as pointed out in the paper. The implied partial inverse is that "some Bs have As as parts"
- and even that isn't strictly implied unless we know that some As exist.   Perhaps this point needs
a bit more expansion.  (As a technical aside not for the paper, finding the least bad approximations
for these cases using multiple models or weaker reasoners is a major issue for us at the moment. I
would be pleased to hear from anyone doing or knowing of work in this area )

*    Other relations often confused with partonomy - this section has got moved about and references
to it displaced.  Will fix. I'll also add a sentence and ref to it in the introduction. Likewise for
the "flavours of part of".

Regards

Alan


Bill McDaniel wrote:

> Here is my review of the simple part-whole note
>
> Thanks
>
> Bill McDaniel
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf
> Of Christopher Welty
>
> Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 11:04 AM
> To: public-swbp-wg@w3.org
> Subject: [ALL] editors draft of simple part-whole note ready for review
>
>
> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/
>
> Is ready for review.  Guus and Bill had volunteered to review it.
>
> -CHris
>
> Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
> IBMWatsonResearchCenter, 19 Skyline Dr., Hawthorne, NY10532USA
> Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055, Fax: +1 914.784.7455
> Email: welty@watson.ibm.com, Web: http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty/
>
--
Alan L Rector
Professor of Medical Informatics
Department of Computer Science
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL, UK
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email: rector@cs.man.ac.uk
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