Re: Comments on informal meaning of the RDFS vocabulary

At 08:42 29/01/2003 -0500, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:

[...]


>Well, if one really believed RDF Schema, then the model-theoretic behaviour
>of RDF should abide by whatever is said in rdfs:comment value.  For
>example,

The following example clarifies the question very well.  Thanks.


>         ex:Cretan rdf:subClassOf ex:Person .
>         ex:Cretan rdfs:comment "All Cretans are liars" .
>
>would mean that the model theoretic consequences of
>
>         ex:John rdf:type ex:Cretan .

The text in:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_comment

is:

[[
A triple of the form:

R rdfs:comment L

states that L is a human readable description of R.

]]

What text suggests that there is any *model theoretic* consequences of the 
natural language interpretation of L?

[...]

>So, an implementor who looks to Schema for guidance on how to build an RDF
>system is going to get the impression that there is no difference in import
>between the meanings given to rdf:type and rdfs:label.  The implementor may
>decide that the only suitable way of presenting resources to users is via
>values of their rdfs:label properties.

We seem to have switched to rdfs:label.  The text at:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_label

is

[[
rdfs:label is an instance of rdf:Property that is used to provide a 
human-readable version of a resource's name.

A triple of the form:

R rdfs:label L

states that L is a human readable label for R.
]]

Right, that could be tidied up:

[[rdfs:label is an instance of rdf:Property that may be used to provide a 
human-readable version of a resource's name.]]

Would that be better?


>The implementor may decide that RDF
>lists have unique firsts and rests and write an RDF system accordingly.  The
>user may believe that RDF lists must always have unique firsts and rests.

That is clearly the design centre.  What text in the schema doc is incorrect.

Brian

Received on Wednesday, 29 January 2003 14:48:43 UTC