RE: English examples in the OWL 2 syntax specification

Hello Christine,

Thanks for this analysis/advice -- I really appreciate it! I still need to think a bit and take all the advice in, but I'll try to
fix the examples in one way or the other.

Regards,

	Boris

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christine Golbreich [mailto:cgolbrei@gmail.com]
> Sent: 16 September 2008 09:07
> To: Boris Motik
> Cc: Kaarel Kaljurand; public-owl-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: English examples in the OWL 2 syntax specification
> 
> Hi Boris
> 
> First of all, including these examples in the spec was really a good
> idea.The irregularities (I had noticed it a while ago when looking at
> the spec for making the Requirements consistent with it) do not seem
> so much  important, compared to the benefit of having such  examples
> in the spec.
> 
> If you decide finally to fix it, some of them may be easily
> uniformized, for example for ClassAssertions, DisjointClasses,
> FunctionalProperty, PropertyAssertion etc. :
> 
> DisjointClasses( a:Boy a:Girl ):  Nothing can be both a boy and a
> girl. -> No individual is both a boy and a girl
> DisjointClasses( a:Man a:Woman ) No object can be both a man and a
> woman. ->No individual is both a man and a woman.
> 
> FunctionalProperty( a:hasFather ) Each person can have at most one
> father. -> Each individual has at most one father
> FunctionalProperty( a:hasName ) Each object can have at most one
> name.-> Each object has at most one name.
> 
> etc.
> 
> > I'd like to hear from others about what kind of approach to adopt
> 
> In general, I would be inclined to favor "a more OWL-centric one"
> rather  than a natural language (or ACE) explanation
> because:
> - people may certainly be able to translate a more OWL-centric into
> natural-language by themselves, since the given examples are really
> simple common sense examples.
> - Users often prefer a more precise explanation, closer to OWL syntax
> rather than natural language which is ambiguous (Perhaps quite
> surprisingly enough, but they even often preferred the DL syntax
> displayed in Protégé than the Manchester syntax in P4!)
> - The examples in the OWL Web Ontology Language  Reference were in
> general rather "OWL-centric " and it was quite used and appreciated.
> 
> In fact, the question of the approach may have more importance only
> for some of the less obvious new features, e.g. asymmetry. I woud say
> that we may be flexible, and add for these few specific cases a more
> informal sentence in NL, if needed.
> 
> In contrast, I found more embarrassing the following in the Syntax
> about the examples:
> in most cases the example that illustrates a primitive/axiom is given
> together with another (or a set of other) axiom(s) introduced by
> "Consider the ontology consisting of the following axiom". Very often,
> this other axiom(s), which appears first and is highlighted by its
> position at the beginning of the example, a special style, font and
> tab, is NOT the axiom corresponding to the presented construct!
> 
> e.g., for  DataSomeValuesFrom in 8.4.1 Existential Quantification, the
> highlighted axiom that we see first is:  PropertyAssertion( a:hasAge
> a:Meg "17"^^xsd:integer while the restriction concerned by the syntax
> of DataSomeValuesFrom only appears after, in small,  within the
> explanation. This is a (trivial) example of the doc, but  for those
> which are longer or more complex, this may be quite disturbing or
> confusing for some non advised readers, making it more difficult for
> them to catch the right illustrative axiom among the other ones.
> 
> So if you finally decide to touch the examples, this might perhaps be
> rectified as well. What about improving the presentation by simply
> changing the order/place of the  axioms and/or the style (for example
> another font, in bold or any else way)?
> 
> Christine
> 
> 2008/9/14 Boris Motik <boris.motik@comlab.ox.ac.uk>:
> >
> > (I redirected this discussion to public-owl-wg, because I feel this is a more appropriate list.)
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > Thanks a lot for this analysis -- it is certainly important to make the examples as consistent as
> possible.
> >
> > Before I change the examples, though, I believe we need to decide on the purpose of the English
> examples. I included them into the
> > spec because I felt that many readers could benefit from an intuitive explanation what a particular
> axiom means. At first, I tried
> > not to use the actual OWL elements in the example; thus, I would explain an axiom
> >
> > SubClassOf( a:Child a:Person )
> >
> > with the sentence "Children are people". But then, some people complained about such paraphrasing
> of the axioms: they felt that this
> > was imprecise. Instead, they thought we should paraphrase this axiom as "Each instance of a:Child
> is an instance of a:Person as
> > well" -- that is, to use a more modeling-centric view. I updated much of the spec; however, I did
> not know myself what to do in many
> > cases. Thus, it is highly likely that the examples are inconsistent.
> >
> > Now the question is really what approach to adopt. I still believe that having some kind of English
> explanation would be very
> > useful. I'd like to hear from others about what kind of approach to adopt there -- a more natural-
> language one or a more OWL-centric
> > one.
> >
> > Thanks again -- I find this analysis really useful.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >        Boris
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: public-owl-dev-request@w3.org [mailto:public-owl-dev-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Kaarel
> >> Kaljurand
> >> Sent: 14 September 2008 20:26
> >> To: public-owl-dev@w3.org
> >> Subject: English examples in the OWL 2 syntax specification
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I extracted all the examples from the OWL 2 Syntax specification (a
> >> revision from
> >> the end of August) to see how the specification expresses the OWL
> >> axioms in English.
> >> After sorting the examples by the axioms, many irregularities in the
> >> English expressions
> >> were revealed. I think most of the irregularities are unintended/unwanted.
> >>
> >> See the report:
> >>
> >> http://www.cl.uzh.ch/kalju/ontologies/OWL_spec/owl_spec_examples.html
> >>
> >> --
> >> kaarel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Christine

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2008 08:14:19 UTC