Hi Paul, 

<snip>
On 19 Aug 2010, at 16:30, Paul Houle wrote:

>      I'm planning to define a few predicates because I think existing 
> predicates don't exactly express what I'm trying to say.
>  
>      Since a predicate is a URI,  there's the question of "What should be 
> served up at the the URI if somebody (a) types it into the browser,  or (b) 
> looks at it with a semweb client?"
>  
>      What's the best thing to do here.  It might be lame,  but I'm thinking 
> about making the predicate URL do a 301 redirect to a CMS page that has a 
> human-readable description of the predicate.
>  
>      I suppose that a predicate URL page could also have some RDF assertions 
> on it about the predicate,  for instance,  a collection of OWL assertions 
> about it could be useful...  However,  beyond that,  I don't think the state 
> of the art in upper ontologies is good enough that we can really make a 
> machine readable definition of what a predicate means at this time.
>  
>     For the predicate that I need most immediately,  there's the issue that 
> there are optional OWL statements that could be asserted about it that would 
> provide an interpretation that some people would accept some of the time -- 
> however,  I wouldn't be coining this predicate if I thought this 
> interpretation was 100% correct.  In this case,  I think the best I can do is 
> make a human-readable assertion that
>  
> "You could put this assertion about my predicate in your OWL engine if you 
> wish"
>  
>     and leave it at that.
>  
>     Any thoughts?

There are some best practises to writing and and publishing RDF vocabs. You can 
find them on the W3C site : 

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/VM/http-examples/2006-01-18/

I would have a look at how FOAF or some other similar project generate 
human-readable documentation for their RDF vocabs, I think there is some tool 
which does it, but I can't recall its name off the top of my head. 

Mischa


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