IsDefinedBy [was: "meaningless terms" verbage for Primer]

Thank you Patrick for your strawman proposal and provoking a discussion 
which I hope will ensure we express ourselves carefully and wisely.

   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2002Dec/0092.html

Your action is recorded in the draft minutes as:

   ACTION 2002-12-06#3 PatrickS: draft one paragraph about
rdfs:isDefinedBy and other terms to draw out them for readers of
the primer

which looking at the transcript:

   http://ilrt.org/discovery/chatlogs/rdfcore/2002-12-06#T15-21-40

was result of a comment from Frank:

[[
FrankM: isDefinedBy mentioned not described in the primer. Do people want 
that added? If so, let me know.
]]

With regards to isDefinedBy, I think it would be fine for the primer to say 
nothing about it.  If the WG felt that the primer would be enhanced by a 
short description, I might suggest something along the lines of the 
following would describe the WG's decision:

[[
It is often useful to indicate in an RDF graph where the definition of a 
class or a property, or indeed any resource, may be found.  The 
rdfs:isDefinedBy property may be used for this purpose.  This property may 
be used to indicate an RDF Schema that describes the resource, however, RDF 
imposes no constraints on the values this property.  If the resource that 
is the value of such a property is retrieved from the web, it may be an RDF 
Schema, but there is no guarantee that it will be.
]]

This text lacks the lightness of touch and ease on the readers eye that I 
would hope for in the primer, so does require some help from the editor, 
but I hope indicates the sort of thing we might usefully say in this document.

Brian

Received on Wednesday, 11 December 2002 13:55:16 UTC