Re: [hcls] Harmonization of labels, descriptions and definitions

Sorry, Bijan.  I should have been more clear.

My statement is predicated on the use of OWL 1.0 which some of us are  
still stuck using due to tools we've become committed to.

OWL 1.1 already provides some assistance in this realm of providing  
more flexible support for 'lexical localization'** potentially by  
using the added support for punning.  I've not had a chance to go  
through this issue in any detail at this point, but I expect this  
could be done.

My sense is additional support is coming in OWL 2.0, if I recall from  
what I've read regarding the work being invested in this next version  
of OWL.

I would stress that whatever support gets added at the formal  
language level must have additional support in the various tools used  
to author and digest OWL ontologies.  These issues of implementation  
are a part of what lies at the heart of this issue Matthias is  
documenting on that Wiki page.

Cheers,
Bill

** I'm using localization here in the same sense that it's used in  
the software development industry, when referring to the support  
provided in many software environments for multi-lingual "views" of  
GUI elements and strings via resources.


On May 29, 2007, at 12:02 AM, Bijan Parsia wrote:

> On May 29, 2007, at 4:58 AM, William Bug wrote:
>
>> This is exactly the point I've been making for over a year now  
>> regarding use of SKOS in biomedical ontology development, and it  
>> is why we use SKOS:prefLabel for all classes in BIRNLex (as well  
>> as having the redundant rdfs:label for interoperability  
>> purposes).  The "altLabel" provides a means not only to associate  
>> lexical variants but ultimately to create "namespace qualified"  
>> term sets or "views" of a single ontology with the terms tailored  
>> to the needs of a specific community.  There would need to be an  
>> expansion of annotation support in OWL to fully implement this,  
>> but SKOS can provide a means to standard that method in the  
>> lexical domain, once the required annotation capabilities have  
>> been added to OWL.
> [snip]
>
> Would you mind explaining exactly what you need from the annotation  
> capabilities? We have been discussing a fairly clean way to beef up  
> OWL 1.1 annotations and I'd be curious to know if it handled this  
> (important) case.
>
> Cheers,
> Bijan.

Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA    19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)


Please Note: I now have a new email - William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu