Re: title format (was Re: comments on Overview and Guide)

On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 20:04, Deborah L. McGuinness wrote:
> 
> "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
> 
> >         Comments on Overview and Guide
> >
> > (I'm waiting for the new version of Reference before providing comments.)
> >
> > - title - I changed to
> >                 OWL Web Ontology Language
> >                 Semantics and Abstract Syntax
> >           on the suggestion of Jim Hendler.  This makes it clear that OWL
> >           is not a misspelling of an acronym.

Hmm... it's not any more clear than previous titles to me.

> >  I suggest that we again
> >           revisit the idea of a common way of naming the documents.

I'd rather not. I consider this an editorial matter. You're the editor.
Please decide.

You're welcome to solicit advice from WG members,
but I'd rather not spend telcon time on this.

As your team contact, I'll remind you that
the W3C manual of style has this advice to offer...

[[[

7.1.1 Document Title
The name of your document in the document head and on the technical
reports index [TR] will read as follows. Optional elements are in square
brackets.

Title [(ACRONYM)] ["Level" n] ["Specification"][: Subtitle] ["Module"]
[(nth "Edition")] ["Version" Version_Number]

Try not to invent a new naming convention. Capitalize title words
following U.S. usage.
]]]
  -- http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#title

The manual of style isn't binding, but it's edited by Susan Lesch
who reads *every* W3C spec at last call and who keeps an ear to the
ground regarding what level of consistency is valuable to
the W3C audience and who, via spec-prod@w3.org, discusses
conventions such as these with editors of a wide variety
of other specs. I'd follow that advice if I were you.


> is this the new consensus on titles?

No, I don't think so.
I'm not aware of any WG decision on titles in quite some time.

> i do not have a strong opinion other than the documents should be consistent.
> the overview is currently following the last agreement that i thought we had on
> naming conventions.
> the current title is:
> Web Ontology Language (OWL): Overview
> 
> if this is the new consensus, then I am happy to name the document
> OWL Web Ontology Language Overview
> 
> and a followup question is are we having any version information on the top of the
> documents?

I'm not aware of any instructions to the editors regarding
version information.

I have a mild preference for not bothering with version
numbers in the title, since it's optional per
the manual of style and we don't have any particular
technical information in our specs about the interaction
between version 1.0 and any higher version numbers.
I think namespace naming is sufficient as a versioning mechanism.

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 20 March 2003 01:07:18 UTC