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

Hi,

I bumped into the same problem as well with a classification scheme. But it had actually context-independent labels in addition to the context-dependent ones, so I could deal with it, even though in a not-that-satisfactory way.

Notice however that the sentence Bernard quotes is only about recommendation:
"It is recommended that no two concepts in the same concept scheme be 
given the same preferred lexical label in any given language."
My guess is that a SKOS validator would just issue warnings when the situation occurs.
Also, an important point: the sentence is not even in the SKOS current reference draft [1]!

Perhaps we could change the sentence, wherever it appears in the end, to fit the usual classification scheme situation as Stella presents it. I would propose something like
"It is recommended that there is one language for which no two concepts in the same concept scheme be 
given the same preferred lexical label."
assuming that the notation language is this language, for classification schemes (btw I always use the zxx language tag for notations)

Now, for vocabularies that do not have unique prefLabels, even taking into account notations, my first reaction would be similar to  Alasdair's: are such "canyon" and "canyon" concepts really distinct in the end? ;-)

Cheers,

Antoine

[1] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/SKOS/Reference#head-1c19f19602cc0ce6e7c77c86c170c95e8e16873b

-------- Message d'origine--------
De: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org de la part de Alasdair Gray
Date: lun. 03/12/2007 11:39
À: SKOS
Objet : RE: Issue : unicity of prefLabel per language per concept scheme
 

Hi,

I have come across the same issue in the astronomy vocabularies that I have been working on. As yet, I have not come up with a good solution either.

I did try using preferred label with no context path information, but this proved to be very confusing in the user interface that I am preparing (where currently just a list of preferred labels is shown): there was no way to distinguish between a Canyon on the surface of a planet and a Canyon on the surface of a satellite. However, I agree that including the context in the preferred label is cumbersome.

One thing that I have not completely cleared up in my own mind yet is whether the concepts are really disjoint. After all, in the astronomy situation, a canyon is a canyon whether it is on a planet or a satellite. In this situation, would some sort of compound label which uses both canyon and planet/satellite make sense (this hopefully can be easily translated into the child custody example or are your concepts actually disjoint?).

Cheers,

Alasdair

Alasdair J G Gray
Research Associate: Explicator Project
http://explicator.dcs.gla.ac.uk
Computer Science, University of Glasgow
0141 330 6292


-----Original Message-----
From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Bernard Vatant
Sent: 3 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

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*Bernard Vatant
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