Re: ontology for units of measurement and/or physical quantities

Hi Yoshio!

Yoshio Fukushige wrote:

> BTW, I come to wonder what contributions W3C can make
> in helping people to find such "standard" onotlogies...
> 
> I partly feel it may be a work out of the W3C's scope to nominate such ontologies,
>  but feel, at the same time, that great(?) many people will be glad to have
> a list of such "standard" ontologies for each field of interest.

Ah, W3C's classic dillema :) Spend 10 years[1] building decentralised,
domain-neutral description technology, that allows anyone to create and
use schemas.... only to find that everyone wants W3C to make most of the
schemas for them too. And there are only so many hours in the day...

It's tricky to know where to draw the line. For things that seem somehow
'architectural', W3C seems a natural home. And I can see units/measures
fitting in there. But it is also tempting to have it play host for a lot
more. The new-ish Incubator Groups ([2]) mechanism is one way of W3C
playing a general hosting role, without intervening heavily in the
activities of a group. Maybe this could be a candidate for such a group?

cheers,

Dan

ps. http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/#sched might be another possible home,
but it's not currently on that group's agenda

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-PICS-labels is a decade old on Oct 31st!!!
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/

Received on Tuesday, 26 September 2006 10:49:32 UTC