Re: review of document-overview

Christine Golbreich wrote:
> Below some comments on the Roadmap section of the Document Overview
>  
> 1. Put the Roadmap at top, as the first section of the Document Overview
>  

I do not think I agree with this. The 'logical' reading of this document
is to get some sort of a very high level picture of OWL in general,
before diving into the details on how and what is documented and where
(which is the roadmap).

> 2.  Roadmap
>  
> a) Add some global text for users below the Roadmap picture , something
> like
> The OWL 2 Document Overview describes should be read before other OWL 2
> documents.
> The reading order of the other documents depends on the audience.
> Advanced readers who are interested in technical aspects, may read the
> documents 2 to 5 that form the technical core of OWL 2 and 6 which
> describes the Profiles. Readers familiar with OWL 1 who want an overview
> of the main new features that have been added to OWL 2 and of their
> rationale, may read document 9. Readers who look for a guide introducing
> OWL 2 and explaining how to use it may read document 8. Ontology
> developers who need a  language synopsis may use document 10. Developers
> interested in conformance test cases may refer to document 10, users
> interested in Manchester syntax should go to document 12  (to be
> completed for 11 -13)
>  

AFAIK, we did discuss having such a text added to each document's
introduction instead of putting the current table everywhere, but I am
not sure we already have such a text drafted. But I presume the same
text could be reused here.


> b) The link XML Serialization  is broken
>  
> c) I'd rather link to the wiki documents to prevent misundertanding or
> confusions at the announcement of its publication w.r.t. LC comments
>  
> d) I suggest to remove all specific mentions at users documents like
> "being revised /being completed" for the users documents, because they
> may be shortly obsolete, and replace it by a single warning at top,
> mentionning that all documents are under revision.
>  
> e) For QRG I'd suggest to replace the sentence : "provides an overview
> of the various OWL 2 features in general" by something closer to the QRG
> abstract, e.g. like "provide a quick synopsis to the OWL 2 language".
>  
> Given the schedule I don't know how to process.
> I 'm available to make the changes on the wiki of those that don't raise
> objection.
>  

Sandro has offered to make the changes he proposed himself. I would
prefer to let him do these, otherwise we get into some wiki-fight where
everybody looses...

Ivan


> Christine
>  
> 
> 2009/3/10 Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org <mailto:sandro@w3.org>>
> 
> 
>     I don't think we assigned reviewers, and I we're scheduled to make a
>     publication decision in about 36 hours; so I did a review, and here it
>     is.
> 
>     With editorship of this document a little vague, and Ian unavailable
>     this week, I'm not quite sure how to proceed.  Here's my suggestion: if
>     you agree with one of my comments, reply with a "+1" to it.  If you
>     don't, reply with a "-1" and/or explanation.  Any of my proposed changes
>     which get at least one +1 and no -1's, I'll try to implement.  (My
>     timeline for this will depend on when/how folks reply.)  (In some cases,
>     I make disjunctive proposals, and you should clarify which option you're
>     approving or objecting to.)
> 
>     My review is on this version:
>     http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Document_Overview?oldid=18827
> 
>     A few of these (like what documents to link to, and fixing the abstract)
>     are show-stoppers; IMO they really have to be addressed before
>     publication.   I'd like to see them all addressed.
> 
>            -- Sandro
> 
>     ================================================================
> 
>     Document Overview
> 
>     * The abstract needs to be handled as a special case; right now the
>      first paragraph gets weird, talking about itself in the third
>      person.
> 
>     * I think the title should be
> 
>         OWL 2 Web Ontology Language
>         Part 1: Document Overview
> 
>     SECTION 1
> 
>     * "Ontologies are formalised" -> "Ontologies are formalized"
> 
>      "W3C uses U.S. English (e.g., "standardise" should read
>      "standardize" and "behaviour" should read "behavior")."  --
>      http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#Spelling
> 
>     * OWL 1 was developed by the Web Ontology WG, not the OWL WG.
> 
>     SECTION 2 (Overview)
> 
>     * "At the top are various concrete syntaxes that can be used to"
>                                               ^ discussed in section 2.2
> 
>     * "At the bottom are the two semantic specifications"
>                                                        ^ discussion in
>                                                        seciton 2.3
> 
>       (without these forward references, the diagram is unexpectedly
>       baffling, I think)
> 
>     * I'd make the diagram bigger -- maybe 700px across instead of 600,
>      but maybe that's just me.     Also a little color might be nice.
>      Ivan, will the source work in InkScape?
> 
>     SECTION 2.1 Ontologies
> 
>     * (here and elsewhere) "OWL 2 Specification" is a really bad reference
>      name for Structural Specification and Functional-Style Syntax.  I
>      don't know what we should call it, but calling part 2 of the OWL 2
>      specification "specification" is ... not okay.  (Yes, I know we've
>      done this in our other publication so far; I didn't want to make a
>      stink then because we'd argued too much about naming, but now looking
>      at it again from the perspective of someone coming fresh to our
>      documents, ...  "No!")
> 
>      There's an argument that we should always refer to other parts of the
>      OWL 2 spec using the approved shortname, in which case this reference
>      would be "owl2-syntax", but ... that's a pretty confusing name, too,
>      especially in a sentence explaining how it's not about syntax.
> 
>      I think my favorite would be "OWL2 Structures".  Maybe we should
>      change the shortname from owl2-syntax to owl2-structures, too.
> 
>     SECTION 2.2 Syntax
> 
>     * "serialisation" (UK spelling)
> 
>     * Maybe do a table of the syntaxes and their properties?
>      (Name, Specified In, Required?, Description)
> 
>     SECTION 2.3 Semantics
> 
>     * "OWL 2 Ontologies that are interpreted using the RDF-Based Semantics
>      are called 'OWL 2 Full' ontologies. " and the last paragraph
>      paragraph...
> 
>      I think OWL Full is/should be the name of a syntactic subset --
>      specifically the trivial subset that is the full language.  The
>      choice of semantics is orthogonal.
> 
>     * On the editor's note -- we don't need to characterize it here; it's
>      too technical for this.
> 
>     * So, the last paragraph needs lots of work, since it conflates
>      syntactic subset (OWL DL) with choice of semantics (Direct
>      Semantics).
> 
>     * I think it would help to have a table like this, to help make the
>      point about the tradeoffs between the semantics, and their
>      relationship with syntactic subsets...
>          http://www.w3.org/People/Sandro/owl2-matrix
>      but it still needs some work, and maybe can never be accurate
>      enough to be more helpful than harmful.
> 
>     SECTION 3: Profiles
> 
>     * I'd prefer this numbered as 2.4.  I think it's more at the same level
>      as 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 and 2/4/5.  ACTUALLY, I think I'd put this BEFORE
>      Semantics, so we can do the table of Profiles-vs-Semantics.  The
>      profiles can be done without talking about the two semantics.
> 
>     * I'd like to include a Venn Diagram, perhaps a version of
>      http://www.w3.org/People/Sandro/owl2-profiles-doc
>      without the roll-overs, and in black-and-white (or make the other
>      diagram be in color).
> 
>     * I'd like to make it more clear that the profiles are syntactic
>      subsets -- and that there may be benefits for sticking within those
>      subsets -- and nothing magical than that.
> 
>     * In particular, DL is a syntactic subset of OWL 2, even though it's
>      not described in Profiles.   That should be shown in this section.
> 
>     SECTION 4: Differences between OWL 2 and the previous version of OWL
> 
>     * Very clunky title...  How about "What's New In OWL 2"?  (it even
>      rhymes)
> 
>     * Maybe subsections, "What's the Same" and "What's New", which seems to
>      be the text here, if divided into groups the same size as the
>      subsections in 2.
> 
>     * The references here (and in some other places) are not preceeded by
>      a space, giving us stuff like "Syntax[OWL 1", which seems
>      typographically wrong to me...
> 
>     * The XML syntax for OWL 1 seems oddly described, and the link seems
>      wrong.
> 
>     * Obviously the editor's note "Editor's Note: Is this correct? Or are
>      there corner cases to be mentioned?"  needs to be cleaned up before
>      publication!  I don't know, either.  If it were left to me, I'd have
>      to leave it in phrased as "still under investigation" or something.
> 
>     * "OWL 1 had only one profile" ...  I think of DL and Full as a
>      profiles.
> 
>     * In what sense was OWL Lite "not retained"?  You can still use it.
>      Maybe better to say to say no new specification for it has been
>      provided in OWL2, but it is still usable as a subset of OWL2.
> 
>     * Last paragraph (about punning) should probably have a link to more
>      details, since it's a deeply confusing concept.
> 
>     SECTION 5 Documentation Roadmap
> 
>     * Let's just call it "Document" Roadmap (not "Documentation") unless
>      we're calling this the "Documentation Overview" (which isn't what we
>      decided.)
> 
>     * Ummmm.  What versions are we linking to here, for this release of
>      Doc-Overview?  The Wiki?  The 2008-12-02 versions?  What about
>      Profiles, which is seriously out of date in all versions, and DRE
>      which hasn't yet been published?  I GUESS we link to the last TR,
>      except in the case of DRE, in which case we say it's to be published
>      soon, and for Profiles include text in the roadmap about it being out
>      of date.
> 
>     * There's been some talk of changing the order.  The obvious things are
>      to put the non-core specs togther, before or after the user docs.  I
>      happen to like it as it is, since I think "Profiles" is more core than
>      the other non-core specs, but I wouldn't object to a change.  We
>      should probably have a WG resolution on this; I expect RPI and
>      Manchester to have strong conflicting views on this.
> 
>     SECTION 6 References
> 
>     * I think these should be organized, somehow; right now I guess they
>      are in the order the references are made?   It ends up looking
>      pretty random.
> 
>      How about alphabetic within groups, where the
>      groups are something like:
>          OWL 1
>          OWL 2
>          Other   (maybe divided into W3C and Non-W3C)
> 
>     * Same question as in Roadmap about which versions we refer to here.
> 
>     SECTION 7 Notes
> 
>     * I don't really think an overview like this should have footnotes.
>      They don't seem overview-y.
> 
>     * For Note 1 (from 2.2), this seems too detailed and novel for the
>      overview.  And it kind of seems to undermine conformance -- is
>      RDF/XML required or not?  Let's just drop this note, and address
>      this somewhere else if necessary.
> 
>     * For Note 2 (from 2.3), this could be inlined in 2.3, or dropped.
> 
>     * For Note 3 (from Profiles), that could go into parentheses.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Christine

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf

Received on Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:18:55 UTC