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

[mpriestl@ca.ibm.com]

For what it's worth, I'm in favour of the plural.

Here's an example of usage taken from Webster's thesaurus entry for class:

                                                                                                
 miniaturization of circuitry made possible a whole new class of small computers and            
 calculators                                                                                    
                                                                                                



If the taxonomists haven't convinced Websters that it's singular, I'm not
convinced either.

As a member of the potential audience for the standard who is neither a
taxonomist, ontologist, nor librarian (merely a technical writer), I'm
inclined to go with what I perceive as common usage.

Michael Priestley
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
Dept 833 IBM Canada    t/l: 969-3233    phone: 905-413-3233
Toronto Information Development



                                                                                                                                     
                      Peter Flynn                                                                                                    
                      <peter@silmaril.i        To:       "'tm-pubsubj'" <tm-pubsubj@lists.oasis-open.org>                            
                      e>                       cc:                                                                                   
                                               Subject:  Re: [tm-pubsubj] Classes are singular nouns ... at least in ontologies      
                      02/28/2003 06:35                                                                                               
                      PM                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                     



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



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