minor comments for CR-rdf-schema-20000327

Here are a few minor editorial comments for your RDF Schema [1] Last 
Call CR, "work in progress." Please feel free to use or ignore them 
as you see fit.


Comments on style:

Are "Class," "Type," "Category," "Literals," "Model," "Syntax," and 
"Schemas" proper nouns? For example, see 1.1 par. 1 and 2, and 1.1.1. 
I think they can be lowercase globally except when part of a 
specification title.

"mechanism" appears about 20 times plus headings. I would save it for 
section 4 where it's needed. One possible unused synonym is "a means 
to." "simple" appears 10 times plus twice in headings. For the best 
effect, I would omit it sometimes, and use it only when necessary. 
"very" can almost always be cut. Also, parentheses are best used for 
unessential material, rather than as a form of de-emphasis; two 
examples are pointed out below and you may find others.

Most class, property, constraint, documentation, and resource 
definitions start with the pronoun "This," referring to the preceding 
heading. To make it easier to quote from the spec., and just to 
improve readability, they could each begin with the marked up term 
itself. For example, 2.2.3 par. 1 could say, "The class 
<code>rdfs:Class</code> corresponds to...." Examples to follow are 
2.2.2 and 2.3.3.

Do you think 4.2 is a little long and hazy, and gives too many 
maybes? par. 4 could possibly be cut drastically to one sentence, 
"Future RDF specifications may provide facilities which will allow 
RDF agents to comprehend as-yet uninvented constraint properties."


Minor typos:

 From here on a section and paragraph number is followed by a quote 
and then a suggestion. Comments are in brackets [].

Copyright statement
1998,1999,2000
[I would add spaces after the commas.]
1998, 1999, 2000

Status of this document - par. 4
[Appendix B is mentioned. Should it be added to the table of 
contents? (It's not there.)]

1. par. 1
[The introductory paragraph has an extra-long sentence.]
     RDF can be used in a variety of application areas, for
     example: in resource discovery to provide better search
     engine capabilities, in cataloging for describing the
     content and content relationships available at a
     particular Web site, page, or digital library, by
     intelligent software agents to facilitate knowledge
     sharing and exchange, in content rating, in describing
     collections of pages that represent a single logical
     "document", for describing intellectual property rights
     of Web pages, and for expressing the privacy preferences
     of a user as well as the privacy policies of a Web site.
[Could be two or more sentences. I shortened them tentatively:]
     For example, RDF can be used in resource discovery to improve
     improve search engine capabilities; in cataloging to describe
     the content and content relationships at a Web site, page,
     or digital library; and by intelligent software agents to
     facilitate knowledge sharing and exchange. RDF can be
     used in content rating; to describe collections of pages
     that represent a single logical "document"; to describe
     intellectual property rights of Web pages; and to express
     user privacy preferences as well as the privacy policies
     of a Web site.

1. par. 2
in [RDFMS]
Long as it sounds, I would formally spell out "the Resource 
Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification [RDFMS]" 
the first time it's mentioned by name.

2. par. 1
Specification
specification

2. par. 2
RDF resources (including classes and properties), and constraints
[I'd remove the parentheses because this section introduces classes 
and properties. They are otherwise not mentioned in 2.]
RDF resources, including classes and properties, and constraints

2.1 par. 1
[The first sentence nearly repeats the first sentence of 2. par. 2 
and could be omitted. The rest of this paragraph is about namespaces, 
a separate topic that needs its own numbered section.]

2.1 par. 3
object-oriented
object-oriented (OO)
[This would explain "OO" later in the paragraph.]

2.1.2 figure 2 - hierarchy.gif, 2.3.2.1 example - car_classes.gif, 
and 3.1.4 figure 4 - constraints.gif
[These GIFs have transparent backgrounds that could make the black 
lines invisible for someone using a user stylesheet set to a dark 
background. Could the whole image be black on white?]

2.2 par. 1, and 2.3 par. 1
"...Every RDF model that draws upon the RDF Schema namespace
     (implicitly) includes these."
[If every model implicitly includes them, then I would remove the 
parentheses. Otherwise, you could say "Every RDF model that draws 
upon the RDF Schema namespace explicitly or implicitly includes 
these."]

2.3.2 par. 1
sub-set
subset

2.3.2.1 par. 2
[RDFMS]. abbreviation mechanism
[Words seem to be missing, possibly "2.2.2. Basic Abbreviated Syntax"?]

2.3.5 last par.
GUIDs or MD-5 hashes.
[Long as it looks, I would spell these out.]
GUIDs (global unique identifiers) or MD5 (message-digest algorithm) hashes.

3. last par. before note
Literal.)
Literal).

3.1.4 par. 5 note
does not constraint
does not constrain

3.2 par. 1
data types
datatypes

4.1.2 par. 2
eg.
e.g.

4.1.2 might have an example.

5. par. 1
xml:lang language tagging facility.
[Could have a reference, "(see [XML] section 2.12)."]

8.1 [SCHEMA-ARCH]
W3C NOTE
W3C Note

8.1 [XML]
10-February-1988
10 February 1998 [to match the others]

8.1 [XML-Data]
et. al.
et al.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327/

Best wishes for your project,

-- 
Susan Lesch, W3C
mailto:lesch@w3.org

Received on Saturday, 10 June 2000 23:02:18 UTC