The general documentation is assumed to have been read. Hyperlinked terms points to their definitions in this documentation.
In most cases, you will simply enter a word
(name) in
the 1st text field and submit in order to see the
categories representing various meanings
of this word (i.e. the categories that have this word as one of their names).
Note: the cases of the letters are important. Use the normal English spellings.
If you are unsure of the name or spelling, you may use wildcards: '?' for one character, '*' for any number of characters. If you already know the creator of the categories you want to retrieve, you may specify it, as in "rdf#*" or "pm#*entity*".
You may be interested in all categories that have a link of a certain kind. In that case, you would leave the first text field empty, select the adequate link and optionally precise a destination.
These selection options may be combined. If you already know the indentifier of the category you are interested in, you do not need these selection options, you just enter the identifier in the 1st text field, adjust the display options and submit. Programs are more likely to use identifiers. To help developpers, the text field next to the submit button shows how the parameters should be encoded if the GET protocol is used. It therefore also shows that any category in the knowledge base may be refered via a URL. Some associated knowledge may also be refered.
You have the choice between seeing only the categories directly linked to the specified categories, or also all the categories indirectly connected to them via a link of a certain kind. In the second case, printed links are not displayed twice except in the "minimal, user-friendly" format when and exploration depth has been given. In both cases, some statements that use the retrieved categories may also be displayed. This happens when the category is an individual (e.g. "Paris", "Venus") or when the statements use the category with an universal quantifier (e.g. "any", "most" and "75%").
If you put some restrictions on the creators by filling the next text field,
the specified categories that do not match the restrictions are not displayed
(nor the categories connected to them).
During the presentation of indirectly connected categories, those that do not
match the restrictions are skipped but the level of indentation is nethertheless
increased to show when and how many categories have not been displayed.
Categories directly connected to the specified categories matching the restrictions
are however always presented for not inducing the user into thinking these links
do not exist.
This filtering mechanism is intended to permit users to focus on the work of
some users when they need to. An example is given (click on "Example" to test it):
Several notations are proposed for displaying the results. If you are a
human being,
you will probably prefer the default format. More information are provided with
the second format which uses the FS
notation. The third format,
which uses RDF/XML, is quite unreadable for people. In this format, statements
are not provided because the generation of expressive statements into a language
as poor, ill-defined and difficult to read as RDF/XML is a complex task.
For instance, in RDF/XML, there is no standard way to represent universal
quantification, various kinds of contexts and various kinds of sets.
We have proposed conventions for the representation of
expressive statements but, unless these conventions are widely adopted or
alternative conventions emerge, the RDF/XML statements that we could generate
would be ad-hoc and therefore probably incomparable with statements from other
knowledge providers.
Finally, the categories may be presented hyperlinked or not.
Clicking on an hyperlinked category is like asking for its direct links and all
its supertypes. To permit the hypertextual exploration of the
ontology along any kind of links (not just
the supertype link), some links are hyperlinked too. For example, clicking on an
hyperlinked '>' will show all direct and indirect subtypes of the category to
which this link applies.
The WordNet Web site
proposes an on-line access to their database and a WordNet browser to install
on a local machine.
In both tools, few search options are proposed (e.g. no possibility of search via
identifiers, wildcarded names or attached links) and categories are not
hyperlinked.
These tools are for human consumption only (no formal notation, no category
identifier provided/presented). They do not permit users to make updates (and
are not completed by other tools permitting that).
Dan
Brickley also implemented a server to provide the supertypes of a given
WordNet category in RDF format. However, this server does not distinguish between
identifiers and names. The provided information is therefore incorrect (in Dan
Brickley words:
"the
current demo conflates 'word senses' with the words associated with those senses").
No form-based interface, search option, or format other than RDF is provided. Only if created by: rdf, M pm#KVO_group
and not created by: fm, ^ #Aussie
This example means that all (and only) the categories from the user
rdf or the users member of the pm#KVO_group should be
shown except the categories from the user fm (user id of "Francois
Modave") and the users that are Australian (instance of #Australian).
This operation mainly restrict the categories to be from the creators "rdf"
and "pm" (user id of "Philippe Martin").
Queries using such filters may not display a lot of categories but still take a
few seconds to perform if the whole ontology (105,000 links currently) is explored
and the server machine is busy;
so please, do not abort these queries.
Comparison with similar tools
Philippe A. MARTIN
Last modified: Wed Sep 27 00:08:12 PDT 2000