Re: [LC response] To Jonathan Rees

(This time cc: public-owl-comments)

These changes address the specific editorial problems I described.

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Boris Motik
<boris.motik@comlab.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear Jonathan,
>
> Thanks for your latest comments. We have made some changes to the introduction;
> the following diff summarizes our changes:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Syntax&diff=20157&oldid=20006
>
> Please let us know whether this addresses your concerns.
>
> Regards,
> Boris Motik
> on behalf of the W3C OWL Working Group
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: public-owl-comments-request@w3.org [mailto:public-owl-comments-
>> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rees
>> Sent: 20 March 2009 21:20
>> To: Boris Motik
>> Cc: public-owl-comments@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: [LC response] To Jonathan Rees
>>
>>
>> On Mar 18, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Boris Motik wrote:
>>
>> > Dear Jonathan,
>> >
>> > Thank you for your comment
>> >     <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-
>> comments/2009Jan/0040.html
>> > >
>> > on the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language last call drafts.
>> >
>> > We indeed wanted to say that entities are one of the three syntactic
>> > categories,
>> > and not IRIs. To understand why this is so, consider, for example, the
>> > ObjectHasValue class expression defined in Section 8.2.3 and the
>> > accompanying
>> > UML diagram shown in Figure 8. The UML association "individual" of
>> > the UML class
>> > "ObjectHasValue" does not point to the UML class "IRI"; instead, it
>> > points to
>> > the UML class "Individual". As shown in Figure 2, the UML class
>> > "Individual" is
>> > a UML subclass of the UML class "Entity". Finally, note that the UML
>> > class
>> > "Entity" in Figure 2 has the UML association "entityIRI" to the UML
>> > class "IRI".
>> > Thus, the Syntax document defines OWL 2 ontologies as consisting of
>> > "entities
>> > identified by IRIs", rather than "IRIs that identify entities". This
>> > view is
>> > reflected in the document's introduction, as well as all the other
>> > documents.
>>
>> I guess it didn't occur to me that OWL would use the words "class,"
>> "property," and "individual" at variance with the way they're
>> ordinarily used in logic, mathematics, and ordinary language, not as
>> related to the domain but merely as syntactic entities. Nor did it
>> occur to me that "identifies" would be a relation between an IRI
>> (syntactic) and an entity (syntactic), since most of the time is means
>> what you call "represent", a relation between syntactic entities and
>> domain elements.
>>
>> Now that I understand all this the document makes much more sense.
>>
>> > We agree with your comment about "can be thought of as primitive
>> > terms", and
>> > have changed the text slightly.
>>
>> The new text says:
>>
>> ''Entities'', such as classes, properties, and individuals, are
>> identified by IRIs. They define the set of primitive ''terms'' of an
>> ontology and can be used to represent the basic elements of the domain
>> being described.
>>
>> This still needs wordsmithing. It says that entities define terms,
>> which is nonsense. The entities (or the IRIs) *are* the terms. And
>> "the basic elements of the domain" is nonsense - the domain doesn't
>> inherently have "basic elements"; rather it is the ontology that
>> selects or defines domain elements for "representation" by entities. A
>> rewrite is needed here.
>>
>> > We have also replaced "formal conceptualization" with "formal
>> > specification". We
>> > would prefer not to use "conceptual model" because it contains the
>> > word "model",
>> > which seems to be susceptible to misinterpretation.
>>
>> The text you have is still not true, in my opinion:
>>
>>      An OWL 2 ontology is a formal specification of a domain of
>> interest.
>>
>> In what sense can an ontology specify a domain of interest? Ordinarily
>> ontologies are descriptive or predictive, not prescriptive. The most
>> accurate statement would be
>>
>>      An OWL 2 ontology is a formal axiomatization of a domain of
>> interest.
>>
>> but I can understand if you think this is too stuffy. One finds
>> "formal model" in the literature (in the sense of formalism-as-model-
>> of-reality), but that's dissonant with the use of "model" in model
>> theory (which has the opposite sense). Elsewhere in this document you
>> talk about "description", and this might work:
>>
>>      An OWL 2 ontology is a formal description of a domain of interest.
>>
>> > The following URI can be used to inspect the changes introduced in
>> > the Syntax
>> > document in order to address your comments:
>> >
>> >
>> http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Syntax&diff=19729&oldid=19723
>> >
>> > Please acknowledge receipt of this email to <mailto:public-owl-
>> comments@w3.org
>> > >
>> > (replying to this email should suffice). In your acknowledgment
>> > please let us
>> > know whether or not you are satisfied with the working group's
>> > response to your
>> > comment.
>>
>> I think these editorial problems need to be fixed.
>>
>> > Regards,
>> > Boris Motik
>> > on behalf of the W3C OWL Working Group
>> >
>>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 24 March 2009 11:21:37 UTC