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Subject: Re: [tm-pubsubj] Classes are singular nouns ... at least in ontologies
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 ---------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>
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