Re: A question regards the Abstract Role in PF work draft

At 11:48 AM +0800 8/15/06, someone wrote:
>
>I saw the role of Window is defined as Abstract but I am not sure 
>what dose Abstract mean here.

The most stable and straightforward statement would be that Abstract
roles are at a level of abstraction *above the level of the
access-API bindings.* In other words, specializations of these roles
may have API bindings, but not these roles.

I believe that in the mind of the author of this section, base roles
are without ancestors in our taxonomy, whereas abstract roles are
intermediate in abstraction between these base roles and the applied
roles that appear in the API bindings. The 'base' roles are only
primitive in the context of our document.  Note the derivation of
wairole:roletype from owl:Class.

I would offer a caveat that this is an area where the Working Group
will need to continue to work before there is a firm Group consensus
on the relationship between the conceptual ontology that extends
without layer distinctions up and down the abstraction axis, and
bindings to practice such as the API mappings that affect only an
abstraction-limited band in the ontology.

Al

PS:  where to find it:

In the introduction of the "Base and Abstract Roles" section, for example

http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/GUI/roleTaxonomy-20060508.html#Base

..  the prose only talks about 'base' roles but the title says 'base 
and abstract' roles.

>Thanks,
>
>Linda
>

Received on Tuesday, 15 August 2006 14:36:37 UTC