Draft draft 0.04

[Alasdair J G Gray]

Rob Seaman wrote:
> Norman Gray wrote:
[snip]
>> If you need to programmatically distinguish one from several 
>> supernovae, vocabularies won't help.  A user's search for 'supernova' 
>> and for 'supernovae' should both translate into the same concept 
>> internally.  The way that would happen is via labels: the prefLabel 
>> is what would typically be presented in a UI, and the altLabels and 
>> hiddenLabels contain strings that will help lead you there.
>
> Hmmm.  Clearly there must be library science standards for denoting 
> plurals.  One is left wondering why SKOS didn't choose to make this 
> explicit.  The altLabel kludge will suffice.  Perhaps we can attach a 
> comment some such to distinguish different uses for altLabels?
>
The above is not quite true, it is all down to our usage. It is entirely 
possible to create a vocabulary that has separate concepts for the 
singular and plural versions of any given term. It has been an unwritten 
assumption that in this work we have been treating them as somehow 
"equivalent" and hence using altLabels.

Alasdair

-- 
Dr Alasdair J G Gray
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~agray/

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