- From: Leo Sauermann <leo.sauermann@gnowsis.com>
- Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:38:46 +0200
- To: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>
- CC: SKOS <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
Gratulations! best Leo It was Dan Brickley who said at the right time 09.08.2010 14:17 the following words: > Hi SKOS folks > > http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/ > http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/20100809.html#term_focus > > Just to let you know, there's a revision of the FOAF specification > today. It includes a new term, foaf:focus that links a skos:Concept to > the thing that the concept stands for. > > This notion has been discussed many times here over the years, > sometimes as "skos:it", but never made it into W3C's REC-track SKOS > spec. FOAF has long contained a cluster of topic-oriented properties > (topic/page, primaryTopic), and in FOAF we have a long-standing > concern with describing the areas of interest and expertise for people > and other agents (eg. organizations, groups, projects). The addition > of foaf:topic is intended as a modest and pragmatic bridge between > SKOS-based descriptions of topics, and other more entity-centric RDF > descriptions. When a SKOS Concept stands for a person or agent, FOAF > and its extensions are directly applicable; however we expect > foaf:focus to also be used with places, events and other identifiable > entities that are covered both by SKOS vocabularies as well as by > factual datasets like wikipedia/dbpedia and Freebase. > > Other relevant changes: the overview of FOAF at the top of the spec > now more clearly separates two informal sub-sets of FOAF terms: "Core > FOAF" terms and "Social Web" terms. The distinction is made with > regard to whether a term is useful in describing someone or something > who lived before the Web / internet. Only the more universal > characteristics of groups, people etc are considered 'core FOAF'; > things like 'homepage', 'openid', 'weblog' are in the "Social Web" > layer. Previously, we mistakenly gave the impression that FOAF was > only for describing modern-day online accounts; hopefully the new > formulation more accurately conveys an interest in capturing > historical information too. There have also been some other textual > changes that attempt to indicate more clearly what we're attempting > with FOAF - essentially the combination of social and informational > networks. > > Re the "Core" subset, brief excerpt: "Core - These classes and > properties form the core of FOAF. They describe characteristics of > people and social groups that are independent of time and technology; > as such they can be used to describe basic information about people in > present day, historical, cultural heritage and digital library > contexts. In addition to various characteristics of people, FOAF > defines classes for Project, Organization and Group as other kinds of > agent." > > Also, various older terms (used in early demonstrations and > prototypes, plus some spelling variations) are now marked 'archaic', > both in human and machine-readable documentation. > > Feedback on the current design and description are welcome, either > here or on the foaf-dev list. My hope is that with foaf:focus we can > begin today gathering real-world implentation experience and data that > could inform any future revisions to SKOS itself. If W3C were to > eventually charter and complete an effort to update SKOS with matching > functionality to foaf:focus, we would of course update FOAF > accordingly to indicate the new mechanism. In the meantime, foaf:focus > is available for use, experimentation and collaboration. I hope it > proves useful when linking topically structured and factually based > RDF information. > > cheers, > > Dan > > ps. one thing the spec currently lacks is an example of the new > property. I'm waiting on this point, as several people are working on > related datasets, and I hope soon we'll have real-world examples to > illustrate foaf:focus's usage. > -- Leo Sauermann, Dr. CEO and Founder mail: leo.sauermann@gnowsis.com mobile: +43 6991 gnowsis http://www.gnowsis.com helping people remember, so join our newsletter http://www.gnowsis.com/about/content/newsletter ____________________________________________________
Received on Monday, 9 August 2010 12:39:24 UTC