Re: silly question about rdf:about

Well... let me jump on this...
This is actually exactly what Topic Maps are doing.

At Extreme 2001 [1] and KT2002 [2] conferences
I presented some steps towards the RDF representation for Topic Maps.
In particular, proposed RDF Topic Maps Schema
has two daml:UnambiguousProperty sub-properties:
rtm:indicatedBy and rtm:constitutedBy
(see slide http://www.cogx.com/kt2002#slide16)

The object of rtm:indicatedBy property INDICATES the subject.
For example, http://www.cogx.com/kt2002 can be used to indicate the notion
of Quantum Topic Maps (QTM),
QTM is one of Topic Maps representations.
Or in N3:

:QTM rtm:/indicatedBy http://www.cogx.com/kt2002; :representationOf
:TopicMaps.

and the object of rtm:constitutedBy property CONSTITUTES the subject
For example you can say that html page at http://www.cogx.com/kt2002 has a
pink background:

:myPresentation rtm:/constitutedBy http://www.cogx.com/kt2002;
:hasBackground :pink.

Note that in the first proposal [1] I mapped Topic Maps constitutedBy
property to the rdf:about attribute.
It was very cute, but did not solve the problem.

[1] http://www.cogx.com/rdfglasses.html
[2] http://www.cogx.com/kt2002

--Nikita.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Seth Russell" <seth@robustai.net>
To: <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>; "Sandro Hawke" <sandro@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: silly question about rdf:about


> I totally agree, and thanks for saying it !
>
> And while we're at it why not just leave the old 'rdf:about' alone for
> people who like built-in properties in their systems and make up a new
> property name ... call it something obvious ... like for instance 'uri'.
>
> And while were at that, why not invent another useful property ...
something
> to mean 'preferred human friendly name' ... this would be like a cyc
> constant, a kif term, or a rdf:label.  The thing that is different between
> it and rdf:about (aside from the fact that it would be human user
friendly)
> is that it can change (be renamed) from time to time and from system to
> system.  But in any given system at any given time it would be unique.
For
> a moment let's just call this new term ':named'.   Nodes so named
internally
> would be tied to URI like this:
>
>     [:uri <http://foo/#Dog>;
>       :named  "Doggie"].
>
> We could say that in XML\RDF with:
>
>    <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://foo/#Dog">
>         <:named>Doggie</:named>
>    </rdf:Description>
>
> Another useful property (that you might like) would be 'local name'.  This
> would be used to publish blank node anchors to the external world:
>
>     [a :Dollar;
>      :givenTo :Sandro;
>      :givenBy :Seth;
>      :localName <uuid:Sue1638877566348489>]
>
> What namespace should we use for these kinds of terms ?
>
> Seth Russell
>
> --- in response to ---
> From: "Sandro Hawke" <sandro@w3.org>
>
> > Why is rdf:about treated as magic syntax?  Wouldn't everything work
> > the same in the grammar if
> > http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#about were just another
> > property?
> >
> > Processors could either be hard-coded to know it was a
> > daml:UnambiguousProperty (thus allowing the usual collapsing of nodes)
> > or they could read that from the ontology.    (Obviously DAML is not
> > part of RDF Core, but the concept of unambiguous properties is still
> > around.)
> >
> > This interpretation would allow uses like:
> >
> >   <rdf:Description>
> >      <rdf:about>http://example.com</rdf:about>
> >   </rdf:Description>
> >
> > and declaring sub-properties of rdf:about to help classify kinds of
> > names for things.   It would also allow zero or more names for things,
> > which seems perfectly appropriate.
> >
> >        -- sandro
> >
> >
>
>
>

Received on Saturday, 6 April 2002 23:33:15 UTC