Re: [tm-pubsubj] Classes are singular nouns ... at least in ontologies

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

Bernard Vatant wrote:
> I understand now most of your points and they make sense. I think the
> bottom line of that debate is that we had not, to begin with, the same
> vision of the target readers of the specification. My view was that we
> target more the expert users (taxonomists, librarians, ontologists ...)
> who are the most likely to be at least the early adopters. It seems that
> you target a wider audience. Certainly we should clarify that, and I
> guess it will turn out that you have the support of the TC majority, and
> I will surrender.

I also surrender :-) On re-reading some of it I think I may have too 
rosy a view of the likely audience. Perhaps the non-technical document
should be left to a book.

> There has been lately a debate in topicmapmail about TM specifications
> (and people) being too technical, with known consequences in terms of

We had the same criticism over the XML Spec. I'm afraid I'm
unsympathetic: it's a formal spec -- get over it. Ancillary descriptions
like Gentle Guides are different.

> adoption and dissemination. I've been quite puzzled by those debates,
> and carefully avoided to step in. But I guess we should not skip that
> debate internally.

My argument can be reduced to a nit: in English you can say

a)  the class of cigarettes (Marlboro, Camel, Gauloises...)
b)  the class <q>cigarette</q>
c)  the <q>cigarette</q> class
d)  the class cigarette::{Marlboro|Camel|Gauloises|...}

(where <q> is some highlight) but not the class of cigarette (singular).

///Peter