RE: TexasThings and owl:equivalentThing

Jim

I don't figure to what extent changing an example in the Guide changes the
substance of the spec, but I understand the process is the process.
What I meant is that a simple change of allValuesFrom to someValuesFrom is
a minimal improvement, but remains suboptimal. So I won't consider it as
simply a typo, since the implications have to be revisited also.

Just a suggestion that would maybe both save the process and make the
example less ambiguous without substantial change. What about replacing the
property "locatedIn" by "madeIn"? Would save at least the status of my
boots :))

Bernard Vatant
Senior Consultant
Knowledge Engineering
Mondeca - www.mondeca.com
bernard.vatant@mondeca.com


> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Jim Hendler [mailto:hendler@cs.umd.edu]
> Envoye : vendredi 19 decembre 2003 13:23
> A : Bernard Vatant; Smith, Michael K; Ian Horrocks
> Objet : RE: TexasThings and owl:equivalentThing
>
>
> At 11:37 +0100 12/19/03, Bernard Vatant wrote:
> >Mike, Ian
> >
> >Thanks for picking up the issue. Better late that never :))
> >
> >BTW my suggestion would be to give up the Texas Thingies altogether, and
> >maybe take the same examples than in the Reference document (Mozart's
> >operas). The point for it is a very simple and generic
> pedagogic principle:
> >any introductory example should offer as small as possible space for
> >interpretation and discussion. Which means that the reader
> should instantly
> >be provided with a clear notion of what is an instance and what
> is not. In
> >that regard, Texas Thing, even with a someValuesFrom
> restriction, is still
> >confusing. Take the following examples.
> >There is no indication of cardinality for "locatedIn". Is a company with
> >several offices, some located in Texas and some not, a Texas Thing?
> >There is now indication of time extension. The Texan boots I bought 23
> >years ago in San Angelo (authentic) have been located in France
> ever since.
> >They've been Texas Things at a time at least, but are they still now?
> >And so on. Trying to figure out the extension of the class, the
> reader is
> >led astray to such irrelevant paths by too open definition, and
> misses the
> >point of "equivalentClass". See my "BlueThing" example in rdf-logic ...
> >OTOH, providing a non-ambiguous definition of Texas Thing would be very
> >arbitrary and controversial, and would need more restrictions,
> which would
> >make the example confusing by its complexity.
> >
> >It figures. Finding good examples is difficult but important.
> 99% of users
> >will build their understanding from examples, not from abstract syntax.
> >
> >Bernard
> >
> >Bernard Vatant
> >Senior Consultant
> >Knowledge Engineering
> >Mondeca - www.mondeca.com
> >bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
> >
>
> Bernard - while I agree w/this in principle, I should mention that
> W3C process doesn't allow us to make very many changes now that we
> have come to Proposed Recommendation status.    Fixing the typo won't
> cause problems, but we probably shouldn't make a major change to the
> example at this time
>   -JH
> p.s. I'm not cc'ing this to the public list - please do't respond
> there - If we need to discuss in public, please use the webont list
> since process discussions aren't usually done on the
> public-webont-comments list
> --
> Professor James Hendler
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-277-3388 (Cell)

Received on Friday, 19 December 2003 09:05:19 UTC