- From: Rinke Hoekstra <hoekstra@uva.nl>
- Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 10:53:30 +0100
- To: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
- Cc: OWL Working Group WG <public-owl-wg@w3.org>
Hi Alan, On 3 nov 2007, at 07:25, Alan Ruttenberg wrote: > I'm not exactly sure how one draws the line here. Personally, I > don't see work on educational material as harmful, as long as it is > well done and doesn't compromise other goals of the group. I don't > see the latter happening currently, so I guess I'm taking a wait and > see attitude towards the efforts of the people who plan to work on > the documentation. Sure, that sounds sensible, it is certainly not my intention to veto any such efforts! > We will need to assess the work they do, and it would certainly help > if they have input from all of us about what we think is important > to have in the documentation. To that end, maybe clarifying the > distinction you are trying to make could help. I think minimal understandability of the specification, can be achieved through making explicit the intentions and reasons behind each document and element of the specification. Things like a comprehensive overview (as investigated by the UFDTF), but also inline examples of every language construct, and a clear synopsis of every document can really help here. I guess this could include use cases as well (as teasers). Educational material, on the other hand, would include e.g. a full tutorial (e.g. Protege's Pizza tutorial), or full-fledged guidelines for modelling (as e.g. done by the SWBP group). The distinction is primarily the `direction' in which such documents are written. The former takes the specification as focal point, and presents it in a compelling way to readers: outreach. The latter would take the user as focus, and unveils the specification in a didactically adequate way. The problem with a strong focus on users is that there are so many of them: a document explaining the standard for a life sciences or medicine oriented audience is not very adequate for people in government, law, environment, science, philosophy, education, etc. etc. In short: the effect may be the converse of what's intended. > One way to make this and other points on documentation might be to > identify some from other analogous projects that people have found > to be particularly useful to them or know to have been useful to > others, and perhaps some examples that have elements that we want to > avoid. Good point, I will try to come up with some examples. Best, Rinke ---------------------------------------------- Drs. Rinke Hoekstra Email: hoekstra@uva.nl Skype: rinkehoekstra Phone: +31-20-5253499 Fax: +31-20-5253495 Web: http://www.leibnizcenter.nl/users/rinke Leibniz Center for Law, Faculty of Law University of Amsterdam, PO Box 1030 1000 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands ----------------------------------------------
Received on Monday, 5 November 2007 09:53:51 UTC