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

Antoine/Alasdair,
Just a brief comment on the proposal below. I have a lot of sympathy
with the general sentiment, but some doubts about simply treating the
notation as another language version. Why not introduce it
straightforwardly as notation, another (optional) element of SKOS? Some
thesauri (especially multilingual ones) have a notation as well as
terms, so would sometimes use it. Classification schemes would almost
all use it. Some taxonomies would use it. Of course, the different
vocabulary types may each use it in slightly different ways! (For
example, in MeSH, a given term may have more than one notation.)
The general guideline would be something like: "Each concept should have
either a prefLabel which is unique within any one language, or a unique
notation." There would need to be an explanation somewhere of whether
the notation or the prefLabel was to be used for purposes of conveying
uniqueness.
All the best
Stella

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-----Original Message-----
From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Antoine Isaac
Sent: 03 December 2007 11:19
To: Alasdair Gray; SKOS
Cc: public-swd-wg@w3.org
Subject: 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-1c19f19602cc0ce6e
7c77c86c170c95e8e16873b

-------- 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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