Re: Ordering concepts in a Tree display

So I'm sure everyone's aware of this already, but as a bit of history,
this discussion bears on the issue:

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/SKOS/Issues/ConstructionOfSystematicDisplaysFromGroupings

...which was issue 84 from the SWDWG [1]. I just looked back at the text of
our resolution at the time, which was:

"""
2008-07-01: [rrs] RESOLVED: Postpone ISSUE-84 as (a) constructing such displays
does not require changes in the SKOS vocabulary, (b) Diego's proposal [2]
demonstrates that some form of implementation is feasible, and (c) we don't
have much time to investigate further. (per Antoine's message of 1 July
[1]. [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swd-wg/2008Jul/0001.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swd-wg/2008Jan/0164.html
"""

I.e., I think we said that defining some orderings that enable you to generate
a systematic display of a thesaurus or classification scheme was at least
*possible* using just skos:OrderedCollection, and Diego demonstrated an
implementation, but we knew this wasn't an ideal solution, and would need
further work.

We were also aware that the algorithm needed isn't the simplest thing in the
world. It gets a bit gnarly if you have nested collections. You also have to
account for poly-hierarchy in the broader/narrower graph, which can be done,
but isn't immediately obvious.

I also remember us somewhere else (sorry, can't find a reference off-hand)
saying that conveying presentation information - how to lay out a systematic
display, for example - was not in scope for the original version of SKOS,
which is why we postponed the issue.

I think I always imagined that either you'd (1) use skos:OrderedCollection and
figure out the algorithm that allows this information to be used to augment
a tree display built directly from the skos:broader/skos:narrower RDF graph,
or (2) represent your systematic display using some other data format (some
sort of XML would be ideal, as you get hierarchy and ordering easily), in
which case you'd have to figure out how to manage your systematic display
data in addition to your basic broader/narrower graph and make sure the two
weren't inconsistent, or (3) use some sort of notation coding or sort key
(which again you'd have to manage and make sure was consistent with your
broader/narrower graph).

I'm not an expert on the details of systematic displays, but I could
imagine you might need to invent a separate XML language to represent all
the possibilities, and that that might be worth doing separately from SKOS
(as a sort of companion).

Cheers,

Alistair

[1] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/84

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 12:37:10PM -0500, Tom Morris wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss@gbv.de> wrote:
> > "this SKOS scheme should be sorted alphabetically by
> > skos:hiddenLabel":
> 
> Alphabetically according to what collating sequence?  The publisher's?
>  The consumer's?  Some globally mandated collating sequence?
> 
> Tom
> 

-- 
Alistair Miles
Head of Epidemiological Informatics
Centre for Genomics and Global Health <http://cggh.org>
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics
Roosevelt Drive
Oxford
OX3 7BN
United Kingdom
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman
Email: alimanfoo@gmail.com
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287669

Received on Thursday, 20 January 2011 10:31:48 UTC