I said:

> >But then
> >this means multiple RDF schema files associated with the same namespace.
> >Maybe this is unavoidable?

Eric said:

> I'm not sure I understand this... Namespaces are a syntactic
simplification
> for providing uniquely identified terms.  Having instance data (Schemas,
> examples, profiles, etc.) that "describe" different characteristics of
> these identified terms allows for a very flexible and efficient means for
> managing decentralized description.
>
> This is a feature, no?

Oh yes, I agree, and I understand your point made in the previous message
that all the descriptions of a uniquely identified term, however they may be
distributed in physical files in different physical locations, are all tied
together by the URI for the term they are describing - and it's _that_
relationship rather than the physical distribution of the descriptions which
EOR is working with.

I was making the point that in various exchanges (which were off this list),
my understanding - and this may be where I'm going wrong as I'm still fairly
new to this stuff...;-)  - was that we were arriving at a position where
there was a one-to-one correspondence between a namespace and an RDF Schema
representation which declared/defined the terms in that namespace. One
consequence of that one-to-one correspondence was that the namespace URI
_might_ serve as a "locator" for an RDF Schema instance describing the terms
in the namespace.

If multilingual support means managing the different language descriptions
of the terms in the namespace as physically separate (distributed,
decentralised) instances of RDF Schema (which it surely must), then there
are multiple RDF Schema instances describing the same namespace. From the
point of view which regards these schemas as metadata instances, this is
fine, and a perfect example of the usefulness of RDF in supporting
distributed metadata instances describing the same resources (in this case,
terms in the namespace).

However, _if_ the namespace URI is also (potentially at least) to act as a
_locator_, then it can only locate _one_ RDF Schema instance i.e. there is a
"primary" (for want of a better word!) instance to which the namespace URI
might serve as a locator, but there are other RDF Schema instances (the
translations of that primary instance) - which are all good, valid
descriptions of the namespace - which are _not_ located by the namespace
URI.

That was why I was returning to the "typology of schemas". Rather in the way
that "application profiles" can be seen as containing "annotations" of the
term definitions in namespace schema (or additional metadata about the terms
in the namespace schema), providing information about real world use of
those terms, so "translated namespace schema" might also be seen as
"annotations" of those "primary" term definitions?

This suggests "privileging" one language representation of the namespace
over another, but it seems that:

if a namespace URI potentially acts as a locator for an RDF Schema instance
declaring the terms in that namespace,

and if that RDF Schema instance contains
declarations/definitions/descriptions for terms in one language only,

then the namespace URI as locator can locate only a single language version
of the RDF Schema description of the namespace.

So.... I think where I'm going wrong is in the first of these propositions
i.e. expecting a namespace URI to act as a locator for an (exactly one) RDF
Schema instance.... :-(

But isn't this what is meant by appendix C2 of the RDF M&S spec? Especially

> In addition, the namespace name serves as the identifier for the
corresponding RDF schema. The
> namespace name is resolved to absolute form as specified by the algorithm
in Section 5.2., Resolving
> Relative References to Absolute Form, in [URI]. An RDF processor can
expect to use the schema URI
> to access the schema content.

I'm afraid the longer I pursue this, the more confused I get..... Any
clarification would be much appreciated!

Thanks!
Pete
-------
Pete Johnston
Interoperability Research Officer
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
tel: +44 (0)1225 323619    fax: +44 (0)1225 826838
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/p.johnston/