Re: [LC response] To Jonathan Rees -- a proposal for responding to Johnatan's latest comments

Please go ahead and send it.

Ian

On 22 Mar 2009, at 09:02, Ivan Herman wrote:

> +1
>
> Ivan
>
> Boris Motik wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have made some editorial changes to the Introduction in response  
>> to Jonathan's
>> comments. I propose to respond to him by sending him the following  
>> e-mail.
>> Please let me know whether this is OK with everyone.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> 	Boris
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Dear Jonathan,
>>
>> Thanks for your latest comments. We have made some changes to the  
>> introduction;
>> the diff showing our changes is here:
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
>
> Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
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Received on Monday, 23 March 2009 12:04:04 UTC