- From: Holger Knublauch <holger@topquadrant.com>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:27:20 +1000
- To: public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org
On 1/26/2015 11:21, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
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> If shapes cannot be the object of rdf:type triples, then they probably
> should not be considered to be classes.
Yes, the updated LDOM design has
rdfs:Class rdfs:subClassOf ldom:Shape
which makes the term "Shape" more general than "Class". All classes can
play the role of a shape, which means that wherever a function needs a
Shape as an argument, a Class can be used too. Which in turn means that
nobody really has to instantiate "Shape" unless they want to make clear
that this is just meant to be an abstract description of constraints
that should never be instantiated. And I can see that this distinction
can make sense sometimes, e.g. in ldom:ShapeConstraint.
(Classes of course have other characteristics not covered by Shape,
which makes the conceptual hierarchy between the two terms less clear -
the above is just a pragmatic definition in the context of LDOM execution).
Overall I think this whole discussion is just a foretaste of the
difficulties that we will have in explaining the difference between
those concepts to the user community.
Holger
Received on Monday, 26 January 2015 01:30:50 UTC