Re: review of LCC documents as of 26 December 2002

From: Brian McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: review of LCC documents as of 26 December 2002
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 17:14:26 +0000

> At 10:03 02/01/2003 -0500, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> >However, they should at least help comprehension of RDF and RDFS, or,
> >maybe, not harm such comprehension.  I believe that the above paragraph
> >firmly sits in the category of paragraphs that will end up harming the
> >comprehension of RDF and RDFS.
> 
> Let me try a rewording that might deal with your objectsions.
> 
> [[RDF's vocabulary description language, RDF Schema, is an extension of 
> RDF. All RDF Schema vocabularies share some basic common structure: they 
> describe resources, classes of resources and relationships. This 
> commonality allows for a finer grained mixing of machine-processable 
> vocabularies, and addresses the need [EXTWEB] to create metadata in which 
> statements can draw upon multiple vocabularies that are managed in a 
> decentralized fashion by independent communities.  RDF Schema uses a 
> semantic extension of RDF to provide an ability to describe classes or 
> resources and relationships.]]
> 
> If that doesn't work, would you like to suggest an alternative.

I gave this a try, and had to give up quite when I realized that the
Introduction directly contradicts itself:

[[1. Introduction

...

This specification is one of several ... that describe and define RDF. ...

...

...

RDF however, provides no mechanisms for describing these properties, nor
does it provide any mechanisms for describing relationships between these
properteis and other resources.  That is the role of the RDF vocabulary
description language, RDF Schema  ...]]

From this one can conclude that RDF Schema is not part of RDF, and thus is
not the subject of this specification.  I then had no reasonable context in
which to fit the paragraph about what RDF Schema really is.


What I was working on was looking like:

RDF's vocabulary description language, RDF Schema, is an extension of RDF.
RDF Schema provides mechanisms for describing groups of related resources
and the relationships between these resources.    ...

...

RDF Schema vocabulary descriptions are written in RDF.  The extra
descriptive power of RDF Schema over RDF is carried in a collection of RDF
resources.  These resources are used to describe characteristics of other
RDF resources, such as domains and ranges of properties.

...


peter

Received on Thursday, 2 January 2003 18:06:01 UTC