Re: Comments for WD-rdf-mt-20030123

pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu> wrote:

>  > Please avoid we (see http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#ref-PRONOUNS).
>
>  Hmm, that poses a problem. The only acceptable alternative in English
>  is the consistent use of the passive voice, which is widely
>  deprecated as making mathematical prose unreadably dull.

I will try to ask the I18n Working Group about this next week at the
W3C plenary.

I trust you will do what is best. MathML uses we, but most W3C specs do
not, including the rest of RDF except the Primer. In some instances
there may be ways around the passive voice:

     In this document we give two versions of the same semantic theory
could read:
     This document gives two version of the same semantic theory

>  > Re:
>  >     (In this and subsequent examples we use the greater-than and
>  >     less-than symbols in several ways: following mathematical usage to
>  >     indicate abstract pairs and n-tuples; following Ntriples syntax to
>  >     enclose urirefs, and also as arrowheads when indicating mappings.
>  >     We apologize for any confusion.)
>  > You could use emphasis (strong, em), weight, color and italic to make
>  > distinctions. As a last resort "<", "<<", and "<<<" would work.
>
>  I thought it unwise to rely on font distinctions such as (code, TT),
>  and the use of color to convey meaning is considered tasteless in
>  mathematical circles. But I will experiment with the use of emphasis
>  for the (rare) arrow cases.
>
>  I presume it would not be appropriate to use exotic mathematical
>  markup, even though these work on all recent browsers?

Whatever you choose should work in as many browsers as possible.

>  > s/establishes that the 'if' part/establishes that the 'if' is part/
>
>  Again that is deliberate and normal usage in mathematical proofs, but
>  I will try to find another way to phrase it.

The full sentence follows. I thought the verb was missing. Sorry if
that was my error.

     This establishes that the 'if' part of the second condition.

>  > In the RDFS Closure Lemma proof, "A full proof would be long but
>  > tedious" I think means long and tedious.
>
>  The usage is common in mathematics where long proofs are sometimes
>  considered to be of absorbing interest, but I will make the change.

Pardon, my mistake.

Best wishes,
-- 
Susan Lesch           http://www.w3.org/People/Lesch/
mailto:lesch@w3.org               tel:+1.858.483.4819
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)    http://www.w3.org/

Received on Tuesday, 25 February 2003 23:21:32 UTC