Holger, We have a very real use case for you to consider: we often have to help people in natural resource management to develop conceptual models (for species conservation, for example). The workflow is typically like this: we pre-define some classes (e.g., A, B), and we pre-define a set of object properties (e.g. p, q). We give this to the domain experts (e.g. biologists) who then need to use some tool to define sub classes of the classes we have defined (e.g. A1, A2, B1, B2), and to establish the relationships among these classes (e.g. using p or q). And they want to do it graphically. The end product is often a huge graph of nodes and links (which gets turned into a computational model later but that's beyond my question here).
Currently what the biologists are using is a home-grown tool for graphical editing. The user can define new classes - top level classes or subclasses of some existing classes (with a set of pre-defined data properties or define their own data properties), can drag some pre-defined classes (nodes) to the graph work area, then use a link tool to link two nodes in the graph, and can click on the link to specify what kind of link it is (which object property it is.) People like it because it's easy to use. The composer can do all this except the part of letting the user choose the object property type in the graphical editor. I am oversimplifying the workflow to bring out the key point. It would be so nice if we could use Composer for this workflow, with all the power of an ontology editor that comes with it. Thanks for considering this. Naicong -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Holger Knublauch Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 3:20 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [topbraid-users] Re: Graphical ontology editing On Dec 13, 2012, at 9:12 AM, Li, Naicong wrote: > Hi Scott, > > But how do I get the desired existing property in the Diagram View in the > first place? The workflow is like this: > > I have a set of pre-defined object properties including p, for which did not > specify any domain/range information. > I have dragged classes A and B into the Diagram view. > I want to associate A and B with the pre-defined object property p. > I click on "Add association" in the Editing Tools palette. > ... And? The "Add association" tool only allows adding (defining) a new > object property. And there appears to be no way for me to drag any existing > properties into the Diagram view. Correct, you need to just open the form of that existing property and then change the rdfs:domain there. I don't think it would be intuitive or a common use case to add existing properties by dragging edges. The role of the graphical class editor is really more to get started with a new model quickly. > Also, for those properties (links) that are in the diagram already, if > I double click on it, I don't see any window coming up for me to > modify its property? (Of course I can always double click on a > property in the Properties panel and edit it that way...) It is not possible to edit a property by clicking on the link. But since the property is also found in the class box, you can double click on it there. Hope this clarifies things. Holger -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group "TopBraid Suite Users", the topics of which include Enterprise Vocabulary Network (EVN), TopBraid Composer, TopBraid Live, TopBraid Ensemble, SPARQLMotion, SPARQL Web Pages and SPIN. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/topbraid-users?hl=en -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group "TopBraid Suite Users", the topics of which include Enterprise Vocabulary Network (EVN), TopBraid Composer, TopBraid Live, TopBraid Ensemble, SPARQLMotion, SPARQL Web Pages and SPIN. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/topbraid-users?hl=en
