RE: "lastname" and "firstname" are not culturally neutral

Excellent.

Many thanks,
Misha


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Heflin [mailto:heflin@cse.lehigh.edu] 
Sent: 25 April 2003 19:46
To: Misha Wolf
Cc: public-webont-comments@w3.org
Subject: Re: "lastname" and "firstname" are not culturally neutral


Dear Misha,

Thank you for bringing up the issue that the firstname/lastname example
in Use Cases and Requirements was not culturaly neutral. In the current
editor's draft, I have ammended that paragraph with an e-mail address
based example as suggested earlier in this thread. Here is the updated
text:

O11. String manipulation 

The language should support string concatenation and simple pattern
matching. These features can be used to establish interoperability
between ontologies that treat complex information as a formatted string
and those that have separate properties for each component. For example,
one ontology may represent an e-mail address as a single string, while
another may divide it into a string for user name and a string for
server name. To integrate the two ontologies, one would need to specify
that the concatenation of the user name, the '@' character, and the
server name is equivalent to the single value used in the first
ontology.

Please let me know if this is satisfactory.

Sincerely,

Jeff Heflin

Misha Wolf wrote:
> 
> Web Ontology Language (OWL) Use Cases and Requirements
> W3C Working Draft 31 March 2003
> 
> | O11. String manipulation
> |
>
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-webont-req-20030331/#obj-string-manipulatio
> n
> |
> | The language should support string concatenation and simple pattern
> | matching. These features can be used to establish interoperability
> | between ontologies that treat complex information as a formatted
> string
> | and those that have separate properties for each component. For
> example,
> | one ontology may represent a person's name as a single string
> "lastname,
> | firstname," while another may have a property for each.
> 
> The concepts "lastname" and "firstname" are not culturally neutral.
> What is more, they are fairly meaningless, as one culture or person
will
> 
> place the family name last, while another culture or person will place
> the given name last.  If the purpose of such a formatted string were
to
> enable, say, sorting by family name, then this purpose would not be
> achieved by the construction "lastname, firstname".
> 
> Please replace "lastname" with "family name" and "firstname" with
"given
> name".
> 
> Thanks,
> Misha
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------- -
>         Visit our Internet site at http://www.reuters.com
> 
> Get closer to the financial markets with Reuters Messaging - for more
> information and to register, visit http://www.reuters.com/messaging
> 
> Any views expressed in this message are those of  the  individual
> sender,  except  where  the sender specifically states them to be
> the views of Reuters Ltd.


--------------------------------------------------------------- -
        Visit our Internet site at http://www.reuters.com

Get closer to the financial markets with Reuters Messaging - for more
information and to register, visit http://www.reuters.com/messaging

Any views expressed in this message are those of  the  individual
sender,  except  where  the sender specifically states them to be
the views of Reuters Ltd.

Received on Friday, 25 April 2003 15:53:20 UTC