Re: comments on http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-rdf-schema-20021112/

Hi Richard,

At 12:33 26/11/2002 -0800, Richard H. McCullough wrote:
>There are a number of domain & range errors in your descriptions of the 
>RDFS properties.  You should check your descriptions against your table 
>"RDF Properties".

Thanks for drawing our attention to this.  Please not however that 
references to specific errors are much more helpful.  Consider the 
difference between:

   Your spec is full of mistakes.  You should check it over.

and

   The range for property foobar is missing on page 5.

The latter is more helpful to us.

>
>Since you provide no definitions, there is confusion about the distinction 
>between "resource" and "instance" and "member".  For example, in the 
>description of "rdfs:type", does the domain of type include individuals, 
>or classes, or both?

Right.  We have some text in progress to clarify that.  The answer to your 
question is that domain of type is rdfs:Resource.  RDF Schema does not 
define the term individual.  Please note also that a class is an instance 
(member) of rdfs:Resource.

>
>In your description of the property "rdfs:object", you imply that Literal 
>is not a subclass of Resource.  That contradicts the definition of Resource.

Right.  That is a hangover from when we were being coy about whether 
Literals were resources or not.  Will fix.  Thanks.

>
>In many places, you say that x "represents" y.  You should say "denotes" 
>or "means".

We are in process of reviewing use of the term "represents".  Sometimes we 
might replace it with denotes, others some variant of the verb to be.


>The ranges in the "RDF Properties" table encourage the continuing 
>confusion between "Class" and "Resource".
>  With the exception of "type", the ranges should be "Resource" instead of 
> "Class".

What properties do you mean.  For example the range of rdfs:domain is 
definitely rdfs:Class.

>The only consistent definition of "Class" that I can come up with is: 
>"Class" is the set of class names.

I have shown you a description of class in discussion on rdf interest that 
was different to that.  To the best of my knowledge, you have found no 
inconsistencies in it.

>  Given that definition, the range of "type" is "Class"

Given the one we are using also, the range of type is rdfs:Class.

>, i.e., a class name.

No, its not the name of a class.  Classes are named by URIrefs.  The range 
of type is not uriref.

Brian

Received on Wednesday, 27 November 2002 03:08:19 UTC