ISSUE-35: RESOLVED: terminology confusions throughout spec docs
class vs description
RESOLVED: terminology confusions throughout spec docs
- State:
- CLOSED
- Product:
- Raised by:
- Peter Patel-Schneider
- Opened on:
- 2007-10-25
- Description:
- Reported by matthew....@ncl.ac.uk, Jul 27, 2007
The OWL 1.1 syntax introduces classes and descriptions. Classes are named
concepts, while descriptions are predicates for set membership.
Typically, classes are associated with one or more descriptions,
specifying which sets of things are members of that concept.
In the semantics document (and fairly pervasively in the object model)
class is used to refer to owl descriptions. In some places in the
semantics document, class is overloaded between descriptions and owl
classes.
There's a similar issue with objectproperty expressions in the semantics
document, and also with dataproperty expressions.
This mixing of terminology is confusing for people like me that don't
work in the core OWL or DL community.
Matthew
- Related Actions Items:
- No related actions
- Related emails:
- ISSUE-35: terminology confusions throughout spec docs (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2007-10-25)
Related notes:
Comment 1 by pfpschneider, Oct 11, 2007
Yes, indeed there are a number of edits that need to be made to the semantics
document. I have marked up my copy with the changes.
I fixed class/description in the Semantics document.
I fixed the one place in the Semantics document for object property expression.
I don't think that datapropertyexpression is similarly fixable - the names of the constructs use dataproperty.
I haven't fixed the figures in Syntax.
Peter http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/User:Peter_Patel-Schneider : OWL 1.0 uses "class" for many of the axiom names, where some other name might be more appropriate. Most of this is due to alignment with RDFS and other RDF issues. In some places, however, class and description were used interchangeably. I believe that I have fixed all of these in the text, but not yet in the figures, as I didn't know how to change them. Looking over them today, I don't see any needed changes, *except* that I don't see where a description can be a class URI. I think that this has to be changed.
Boris http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/User:Bmotik2 : I've fixed Figure 2 and added Description as a superclass of OWLClass -- thanks Peter for spotting this error. I believe we can now close this issue.
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