Re: Symbols and depictions

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 03:26:33PM -0000, Alistair Miles wrote:
> So a depiction and a symbolic label are different things.
> 
> Often in a symbolic concept scheme a concept may have a symbolic label that
> also happens to be a depiction of that concept.  For example, I could use a
> dog shape as a symbol for the concept [skos:prefLabel 'dogs';
> skos:definition 'a common four-legged animal, especially kept by people as a
> pet or to hunt or guard things'].  In this case the image is both a
> depiction and a symbolic label for the concept.  
> 
> However, just because an image is used as a symbolic label for a concept,
> does not mean it is necessarily a depiction of that concept.  (i.e.
> foaf:depiction should *not* be a super-prop of
> skos:altSymbol/skos:prefSymbol).
> 
> Does this make sense?

Actually, I have trouble understanding the distinction as
well -- but that doesn't really matter.  The real question is
whether the distinction makes sense to the probable users of
SKOS, such as thesaurus experts.  I was assuming that SKOS
is not the first to introduce the distinction -- that it is
defined in some of the other thesaurus standards mentioned
in the document.  What might help, then, would be to make
that connection to other models clear in a sentence or two,
with bibliographic references.

Tom

-- 
Dr. Thomas Baker                        Thomas.Baker@izb.fraunhofer.de
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Received on Thursday, 27 January 2005 15:19:04 UTC