proposed response for http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webont-comments/2003Apr/0023.html

Here is my proposed response for
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webont-comments/2003Apr/0023.html

I view most of the comments as requiring at most editorial changes, but
there is the substantive issue of whether owl:Nothing is in OWL Lite, which
I think deserves official working group consideration.

I have already made the changes in a private copy of the document, but
this version is not yet available on the web.  (This does, however, point to
a need for handling approval of such changes in order and in a timely
fashion, so as to not require too much effort by editors.)

peter




Again, thank you for your comments.   In this message I propose some
editorial and tyopgraphical changes that I think might help to address
most of them.

> 1. 
> 
> [2.1. Ontologies 
> 
> There are two built-in classes in OWL,....
>  The class with identifier owl:Thing is the class of all individuals, and
> is part of OWL Lite. The class with identifier owl:Nothing is the empty
> class.  
> ...
> ]
> 
> It should be explicitly specified whether or not owl:Nothing is included
> in OWL Lite.  

I have made the editorial change to add ``, and is part of OWL DL, but not
part of OWL Lite'' at the end of the above quote.

> It would be nice and elegant to include owl:Nothing in OWL Lite if there
> is no harm to do so. 

It was a working group decision to not include owl:Nothing in OWL Lite,
even though an equivalent class can be defined in OWL Lite.  Your comment,
however, will be considered by the working group.

> 2.
> 
> [2.3. Axioms
> ...
> However, **most information about properties** is more naturally
> expressed in restrictions, which allow local range and cardinality
> information to be specified.  
> ...
> ]
> Restrictions are about to define new classes, not to specify
> properties. So the above sentence should be modified if possible.  

Information about properties is not exactly specifying those properties.  I
do agree, however, that this sentence could be said better, so I've changed
it to read ``most information concerning how properties'' .  It would also
be possible to write a much longer explanation of the difference here, but
I feel that that would not be helpful here.

> 3.
> 
> [2.3.1.2. OWL Lite Restrictions
> 
> cardinality ::= 'minCardinality(0)' | 'minCardinality(1)' |
>             | 'maxCardinality(0)' | 'maxCardinality(1)' |
>             | 'cardinality(0)'    | 'cardinality(1)'
> ]
> 
> There are two reduantant symbols '|'.

Thanks for noticing.  I made the typographical change to eliminate them.

> 4. About individual
> 
> Just suggestion:
> The named individual and the anonymous individual should be explicitly
> separated. There are some essential differnce between facts about named
> individuals and the ones about anonymous individuals.  

I believe that the explanatory text adequately makes the distinction
between named and anonymous individuals, and that there does not need to be
separate productions for them, particularly as the productions are very
similar.

> Yuzhong Qu
> Dept.Computer Science and Engineering
> Southest University, Nanjing, China
> http://cse.seu.edu.cn/People/yzqu/en

Please reply to the mailing list as to whether the above changes adequately
address your comments (except for whether owl:Nothing is in OWL Lite, which
will be separately addressed).

Again, thank you.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research
Lucent Technologies

Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2003 10:23:27 UTC