Namespaces -- Out of scope of OWL?

The OWL/1.0 abstract syntax is essentially silent on the subject of
QNames, namespaces and how to abbreviate URIs; I imagine this is because
they're a pretty thorny issue that's a bit implementation-specific.

The OWL/1.1 spec *does* have QNames etc, and includes namespace
declarations in the abstract syntax. I think it would be safer to remove
this and follow the OWL/1.0 path of leaving this up to implementors. The
treatment of names in OWL/1.1 is essentially exactly that of OWL/1.0
except that we use IRIs instead of URIs (as noted in OWL-concepts).

For example, if a user were to define 'amp' as a namespace prefix, they
may be surprised by the effects this has on certain bits of the XML
serialisation of their ontology.

Cheers,

Dave





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Received on Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:02:17 UTC