RE: Issue-76: SymbolicLabels

Dear all,

As follow up of this topic I have been assigned the action to make examples
of symbols or other annotation in which language is essential and language is
not used, so that we can chose when using plain literals and when use
datatype literals.
I contacted the FAO agrovoc users and linguists to help me on the decision.

I will try refer to the examples used already:

1) Chemical symbols: 

Most of the user mention that inorganic chemistry symbols are international,
but for some languages they seems need the translation of the symbol also
(Japanese, Thai).

2) Chemical formulas:

Most of the user mention that organic compounds formulas (BrCH2CH2Br) are
also international, but other alphabets may be used for other compounds (e.g.
cyrillic alphabet: 1,2-Dibromoethane will be written as 1,2-дибромэтан). 
In this case we do need the language indications.

3) Acronyms may exists in Cyrillic also.

4) Other symbols (e.g. food component) may also need language indications
(with specific alphabets).

So my conclusion is that most of the times we may need language indications.

Hope this helps
Margherita

-----Original Message-----
From: public-swd-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-swd-wg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Sini, Margherita (KCEW)
Sent: 13 May 2008 18:55
To: SWD WG
Subject: Issue-76: SymbolicLabels


Dear all,

Previous drafts of SKOS included skos:prefSymbol and skos:altSymbol and the
issue is if they should be dropped. I am here giving use cases in support of
these elements. 
Of course is they will be dropped then we have to use skos:altLabel to
represent those elements.

1) If we take the AGROVOC thesaurus: it contains all the chemical elements,
which are currently in agrovoc 60, but could be more than 120...
Example: Phosphorus is a term with a specific termcode (5804). Another term
exists with code 13015 which is "P (symbol)", and these are related by the
USE/UF relationship. BUT, if we could have skos:altSymbol, we would not need
to use skos:altLabel and we would not need to indicate "(symbol)" in the
agrovoc term.
Also: this symbol in general is the same for all languages except for
non-latin alphabets. But these could be represented with the skos:altSymbol:
in this case we may need to assign a language to the skos:altSymbol. If we
decide not, then we could treat the different languages for symbols as
skos:altLabel.

P (symbol) (EN)
P (symbole) (FR)
P (símbolo) (ES)
磷元素 (ZH)
P (símbolo) (PT)
P (CS)
リン (JA)
พี (สัญลักษณ์) (TH)
p (chemická značka) (SK)
P (SYMBOL) (DE)
P (vegyjel) (HU)
P (symbol) (PL)
P (simbolo) (IT)
पी फास्फोरस का (चिन्ह) (HI)

Below the full list of terms in agrovoc indicated as symbols.

2) AGROVOC contains chemical compunds such as "1,2-Dibromoethane", which has
the formula BrCH2CH2Br. This formula may be represented as  skos:prefSymbol. 
Chemicals may also have associated other codes coming from internationally
recognized standards, such as the CAS Number: 106-93-4.... This can be
skos:altSymbol, but in this case we would need an attribute to indicate which
skos:altSymbol it is (CAS or others...)... Otherwise again skos:altLabel
could be used. Number of these terms in agrovoc: more than 100.

3) Other substances such as ASPARAGINE may have symbols:
di-N-acetylchitobiosyl poly(L-asparagine) (source MESH Thesaurus)

4) The food component ontology (or repository) in FAO has food substances
with symbols:  phosphatidyl choline  --> symbol:  CHLNP dodecanoic acid.
Saturated fatty acid with 12 carbons  --> symbol:  F12D0 Note these are not a
termcodes, but a international symbols given to the substance. These are
indipendent from the language. May have alternative symbols in other systems.

5) Vitamins also have symbols: around 20 in agrovoc. Some also in MESH. E.g.
alpha-tocopheryl polyethylene glycol succinate --> vitamin E-TPGS

6) The tag skos:prefSymbol and skos:altSymbol may also be used to represent
codes referred to the same concept in other systems (specifying the source
somehow).

7) Geographical names may have associated symbols: ALBANIA has ISO country
code (alpha-3-code) -->  ALB
But also here we may need to specify an attribute for the code (ISO3 ISO2 UN,
etc)

8) Currency Symbols:  Q for guatemala, $ for USA, EUR or € for european
countries (we may use both skos:prefSymbol and skos:altSymbol).


So, based on this I support the idea to keep them. Sorry for not having
provided before use cases.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Margherita


------------------
List of terms (symbols) from agrovoc

Ag (symbol)   (EN) 
Al (symbol)   (EN) 
Am (symbol)   (EN) 
As (symbol)   (EN) 
Asymbolus analis   (EN) 
Asymbolus spp   (EN) 
Asymbolus vincenti   (EN) 
B (symbol)   (EN) 
Ba (symbol)   (EN) 
Be (symbol)   (EN) 
Bi (symbol)   (EN) 
Br (symbol)   (EN) 
C (symbol)   (EN) 
Ca (symbol)   (EN) 
Cd (symbol)   (EN) 
Cl (symbol)   (EN) 
Cm (symbol)   (EN) 
Co (symbol)   (EN) 
Cr (symbol)   (EN) 
Cs (symbol)   (EN) 
Cu (symbol)   (EN) 
F (symbol)   (EN) 
Fe (symbol)   (EN) 
H (symbol)   (EN) 
Hg (symbol)   (EN) 
I (symbol)   (EN) 
K (symbol)   (EN) 
Li (symbol)   (EN) 
Mg (symbol)   (EN) 
Mn (symbol)   (EN) 
Mo (symbol)   (EN) 
N (symbol)   (EN) 
Na (symbol)   (EN) 
Ni (symbol)   (EN) 
Np (symbol)   (EN) 
O (symbol)   (EN) 
P (symbol)   (EN) 
Pb (symbol)   (EN) 
Pt (symbol)   (EN) 
Pu (symbol)   (EN) 
Ra (symbol)   (EN) 
Rb (symbol)   (EN) 
S (symbol)   (EN) 
Sb (symbol)   (EN) 
Se (symbol)   (EN) 
Si (symbol)   (EN) 
Sisymbrium   (EN) 
Sn (symbol)   (EN) 
Sr (symbol)   (EN) 
Symbionts   (EN) 
Symbiosis   (EN) 
Tc (symbol)   (EN) 
Te (symbol)   (EN) 
Tl (symbol)   (EN) 
U (symbol)   (EN) 
V (symbol)   (EN) 
W (symbol)   (EN) 
Zn (symbol)   (EN) 
Zr (symbol)   (EN) 
------------------------------

Received on Monday, 26 May 2008 17:22:11 UTC