Re: The semantics of rdfs:label

Sorry to butt into a working group discussion but I'd like to question this.

Any candidate common superproperty of *all* name properties will have to 
apply to both instance data and concepts (classes and properties) and so 
cannot avoid taking you into OWL/full. In which case I see no justification 
for not using rdfs:label for that.

A base naming property which only applies to individuals and so can be 
subPropertied within OWL/DL might be useful but it should itself be a 
subproperty of rdfs:label (even if that fact was kept hidden from DL 
processors).

I would have thought that rdfs:label was a perfectly reasonable way to 
represent topic map untyped names, though my knowledge of topic maps is 
weak enough I might be missing something.

We spend a lot of time advising people to use names instead of relying on 
the localname part of URIs. The fact that in RDF there is a single, clear, 
standard, built-in, widely-supported, naming property rdfs:label for naming 
everything makes this much easier. Please could SWBP be very careful not to 
accidently create any confusion about the default naming property to use.

Dave

Christopher Welty wrote:

> Lars,
> 
> As I believe you have already concluded, rdfs:label is clearly not the 
> "standard" common superproperty of all name properties.  I think, as you 
> suggested, creating a property specifically for this purpose is the right 
> way to go, and people (like Dan) for whom rdfs:label already is that 
> property can specify the equivalence in their vocabularies, and people 
> (like me) for whom it is not can keep them separate.
> 
> -Chris
> 
> Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
> IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr., Hawthorne, NY  10532
> Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055, Fax: +1 914.784.7455
> Email: welty@watson.ibm.com
> Web: http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty/
> 
> 
> 
> Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@ontopia.net> 
> Sent by: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
> 09/15/2005 03:27 PM
> 
> To
> public-swbp-wg@w3.org
> cc
> 
> Subject
> Re: The semantics of rdfs:label
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> * Christopher Welty
> |
> | I'm not sure there is an official answer to the question.  But I
> | have a lot of experience with it that I can share.
> 
> Your advice seems quite sound to me, but is mostly helpful for people
> creating vocabularies. The RDFTM task force is in a slightly different
> position, however. We have to create a generic mapping between a
> technology that does not have a built-in concept of names (RDF) and
> one that does (Topic Maps). This was why we were wondering if
> rdfs:label is the common superproperty of all name properties. If it
> is, it means that untyped names from Topic Maps can become rdfs:label
> statements in RDF, and vice versa. If not things get a little harder.
>

Received on Friday, 16 September 2005 10:37:11 UTC