RE: Issue : unicity of prefLabel per language per concept scheme

Bernard,
Yes, that is the practice followed in classification schemes and some
taxonomies, especially the monohierarchical ones. A classification
scheme does not have a "preferred term", with the properties described
in ISO 2788 and BS8723-2; for display purposes it has a caption that
does not have to be unique, plus a notation that does have to be unique.
In a taxonomy, the category label may be comparable with the caption of
a classification scheme, and uniqueness may be conveyed by a notation or
by an identifier. See BS 8723-3 for a more complete discussion.
Because of these subtle differences in the functions of the various
elements, I've always had reservations about using SKOS for several
different types of vocabulary. There are certainly advantages in using
one format to carry any type of vocabulary, but I feel the internal
constraints/validations when encoding any one vocabulary may need to
vary from one type of vocabulary to another.
Cheers
Stella

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Stella Dextre Clarke
Information Consultant
Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8RR, UK
Tel: 01235-833-298
Fax: 01235-863-298
SDClarke@LukeHouse.demon.co.uk
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Bernard Vatant
> Sent: 03 December 2007 09:54
> To: SKOS
> Subject: Issue : unicity of prefLabel per language per concept scheme
> 
> 
> 
> I've several current SKOS use cases making me wondering about this 
> recommendation in 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-guide-20051102/#secmulti
> 
> "It is recommended that no two concepts in the same concept scheme be 
> given the same preferred lexical label in any given language."
> 
> This recommendation follows the thesaurus standard practice, 
> but other 
> types of structured vocabularies which seem to be in the 
> scope of SKOS 
> don't follow this practice. I've in mind controlled 
> vocabularies in law, 
> where the same term is used in different contexts to label different 
> concepts, the disambiguation being by context. The context itself is 
> usually formally represented by a path to the concept in the 
> broader-narrower tree, e.g., the following are four distinct concepts 
> all using the term "Children custody" in different contexts, 
> but in the 
> same Concept Scheme "Divorce".
> 
> Contentious divorce: Temporary arrangements: Children custody 
> Contentious divorce: Definitive arrangements: Children 
> custody Non-contentious divorce: Temporary arrangements: 
> Children custody Non-contentious divorce: Definitive 
> arrangements: Children custody
> 
> In such cases, encapsulating the context in the prefLabel string is 
> rapidly cumbersome in interfaces, the context chain can become 
> arbitrarily long in such matters.
> 
> How would one SKOS-ify such a vocabulary? If "Children 
> custody" is used 
> as prefLabel, the recommendation of unicity is obviously 
> broken, if not, 
> what should be the recommended value of prefLabel?
> 
> Bernard
> 
> -- 
> 
> *Bernard Vatant
> *Knowledge Engineering
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>

Received on Monday, 3 December 2007 10:37:37 UTC