Guide comments

Guide editors,

Just wanted to express my appreciation for a great job on the guide.

Here's some comments and requests for claficiation on the latest 
version (http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/guide-src/Guide.html).

As there's no page or para numbers I'll use the line numbers from the 
HTML source:

line 365 and 366, "instances of classes", "instances of properties"
There's still some inconsistency about the use of instance vs 
individual in this document.

line 375, para begins "A set of OWL assertions loaded into..." --
The sentence that begins "These assertions..." is IMO a little 
ambiguous due to the commas, suggest rewording as:
"These assertions may include facts
about individuals that are members of classes, as well as various
<em>derived</em> facts, i.e. those facts not literally present in the 
original
textual representation of the ontology, but <em>entailed</em>
(logically implied) by the semantics of OWL. "

line 423, para begins "One advantage of OWL ontologies..."
The "They" in the second sentence is ambiguous, suggest replacing with 
"Tools".

line 488, para begins "Ontology developers adopting OWL"
First introduction of term "dialect" which contradicts earlier comment 
that OWL is a set of _languages_.
Also, typo(?) "predicatable" in penultimate sentence.

line 728, para begins "Importing another ontology"
You indicate that importing brings the definitions into the "knowledge 
base"; however, you've defined a knowledge base earlier as a container 
for individuals, not classes.

line 1155, example on the use of ObjectProperty
Can the domain and range of an ObjectProperty be modified? For example, 
is the following valid:

<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="madeFromGrape">
   <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Wine"/>
   <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#WineGrape"/>
   <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#AntiFreeze"/>
</owl:ObjectProperty>

<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="madeFromGrape">
   <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Grappa"/>
</owl:ObjectProperty>

I.e. two questions: what's the cardinality of rdfs:range (and 
rdfs:domain), and if it's more than 1, can the range of a property be 
extended in another ontology?

line 1261, Vintage class example
Why is this class defined to be a subclass of #Thing? (Whereas none of 
the other classes in this document make that definition, even though 
it's assumed.)

line 1307, example vintage years
Why is xsd:decimal used, rather than, say, integer, or positiveInteger?

line 1342, para begins "The <tt>yearValue</tt> property"
I don't think you mean _decimal_ in "The <tt>yearValue</tt> property 
relates <tt>WineYear</tt>s to decimal numbers
greater than or equal to 1700."

cheers

Bernard

Bernard Horan
Senior Staff Engineer, SunLabs Europe
Sun Microsystems Ltd, M/S ECBG01
Sun House, 306 Cambridge Science Park
Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WG, UK
+44 (0)1223 418925
+44 (0)1223 420058 fax
bernard.horan@sun.com

Received on Friday, 6 December 2002 08:09:35 UTC