Re: [SKOS] Comments on SKOS Primer - other points

> 
>>> -- With regard to notations (Section 4.6)
>>>
>>>        These are language-independent symbols, designed to allow
>>>        an easy re-use of the whole vocabulary in different
>>>        languages. They are typically composed of digits,
>>>        complemented with punctuation signs and other characters,
>>>        as in the following UDC example:
>>>
>>>   The wording seems to imply that notations are
>>>   "language-independent" by _definition_, not just
>>>   _typically_.  It seems a bit stronger than the SKOS Reference
>>>   formulation that notions are "not normally recognizable
>>>   as a word or sequence of words in any natural language" [*].
>>>
>>>   [*] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/SKOS/reference/20081001/#notations
>> Hmm. The language-independant here really meant, as explained in the rest 
>> of the sentence, that the notation does not change from one natural 
>> language to the other. Would you have a better term for this?
> 
> Ah, I hadn't understood that, perhaps because it is not
> entirely clear that "the whole vocabulary" refers to the set
> of notations.  Maybe the sentence could use the formulation
> from SKOS Reference and say
> 
>     Notations are symbols which are typically
>     language-independent (i.e., not normally recognizable as
>     words or sequences of words in any natural language).
> 
> Or, to emphasize usability in different language contexts:
> 
>     Notations are symbols which are not normally recognizable
>     as words or sequences of words in any natural language and
>     are thus usable independently of natural-language contexts.

I'll take this one!

 >>> -- I'm not sure the following is phrased quite right (Section 3.1):
>>>
>>>        Had the concepts been assigned other information, such
>>>        as semantic relationships to other concepts, or notes,
>>>        these would be merged as well, resulting in completely
>>>        new conceptual entities.
>>>
>>>   The idea is not that some new entity would be _created_
>>>   by merging asserted semantic relationships from multiple
>>>   sources (which is implied by "resulting in new... entities")
>>>   but that the _existing_ entity would in effect be overlaid
>>>   with different associations and thus would acquire
>>>   conceptually new meanings.  Maybe there's a better way to
>>>   put this?
>> True. I propose to replace the above sentence by 
>> [[Had the concepts been assigned other information, such as semantic 
>> relationships to other concepts, or notes, these would be merged as well, 
>> causing these concepts to acquire a new meaning.]]
> 
> Okay.  Maybe "s/a new meaning/new meanings/".

I had already done the change myself in-between :-)

Thanks again for the careful wordsmithing,

Antoine

Received on Thursday, 8 January 2009 10:58:55 UTC