ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] Fact Guru, Controlled NLs, and OOR

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Mike Bennett <mbennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:50:17 +0100
Message-id: <4D935139.40401@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
That does sound interesting. I had a sort of "Aha" moment last 
week when we were talking about synonyms and heteronyms at an OMG 
/ EDM Council event. It struck me that an ontology has formal 
definitions of concepts with synonyms, whereas a terminology is a 
set of words, with one or more meanings per word, and therefore 
has heteronyms. That's why for instance we have no concept of 
heteronym in our ontology. Nor (for similar reasons) do we have 
homonyms.    (01)

No doubt for most people that's this week's glimpse into the 
obvious, but it made things come clear for me - ontologies and 
terminologies are complementary but different, so any tool that 
formally relates one to the other has to be good.    (02)

Mike    (03)

On 30/03/2011 15:05, John F. Sowa wrote:
> We have discussed the relationships between ontologies and terminologies
> in many email threads.  Some people blur the distinction by saying that
> their terminologies are ontologies, and others make a sharp distinction
> between them.  But one point is clear:  the people who use applications
> only see terminologies, and the developers need to relate ontologies
> to terminologies.
>
> A few weeks ago, I sent a note that mentioned Fact Guru by Doug Skuce
> as tool that could help bridge the gap between terminologies and
> ontologies.  In particular, FG could simplify the task of mapping
> the terms of an terminology to the more formal ontology.  After the
> development of the ontology, FG could be used to display either or
> both, side by side.  For the Open Ontology Repository, FG could be
> useful, but only if the software were available as open source.
>
> Therefore, I had a discussion with Doug about the possibility of
> releasing the Fact Guru software as open source under the LGPL.
> Doug agreed, and he is also planning to attend the Ontology Summit
> on April 18.  He would be happy to discuss the use of FG with anyone
> who may be interested.  On the cc list above, I added the email for
> Doug Skuce and for John Talbot, who did most of the implementation.
>
> In the links below, note the wide range of sophistication of the
> possible applications.  The Animals example was implemented by
> Doug's 9-year-old daughter as a school project.  The SUMO example
> was downloaded from the actual SUMO ontology.  For each term in
> SUMO, FG shows both the English-like text and the axioms written
> in KIF.
>
> John Sowa
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Fact Guru
> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:31:05 -0500
> From: John F. Sowa<sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: [ontolog-forum]<ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> CC: Doug Skuce<drskuce@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> I was talking with an old friend, Doug Skuce, who taught AI and
> knowledge engineering at the University of Ottawa for many years.
> He and his students and colleagues have developed some software
> that could be valuable for designing and supporting ontologies.
>
> In the late 80s he developed a knowledge acquisition tool called
> CODE (Conceptually Oriented Development Environment) in Smalltalk.
> Since CODE did not run on the web, he designed a new version called
> Fact Guru in the late 90s.  FG can be used to organize a knowledge
> base of any kind and present it in a highly readable way;
>
>      http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/FactGuru.pdf
>
> Following is a blurb from the web site:
>
>      With Fact Guru you can improve understanding by:
>
>        * storing facts grouped by subject in a highly structured
>          knowledge base.
>
>        * searching the knowledge base to find just the fact you need
>
>        * comparing subjects to see a comparison matrix of differences
>
>        * viewing subjects as a graph to see relationships between them
>
> For a beginner's example that uses only English, see the knowledge
> base of Canadian Animals, which was implemented by Doug's nine year
> old daughter.  Click on any animal name to find a collection of
> information about it:
>
>      http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/animals/index.html
>
> More important for ontology is the use of Fact Guru to import,
> organize, and display the top-level ontology of SUMO:
>
>      http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/sumo/index.html
>
> For an example of a knowledge base about a technical subject,
> see the Fact Guru KB about the Java programming language, which
> Doug used for teaching a course on Java:
>
>      http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/java/index.html
>
> This KB is important for two reasons:  (1) it is cross linked
> to an associated HTML document about Java; and (2) it is written
> in a version of controlled English called ClearTalk.
>
> Doug is currently working with some programmers who are
> reimplementing Fact Guru with the Drupal content management
> software in order to organize and relate multiple knowledge
> bases.  This could be useful for the Open Ontology Repository.
>
> I thought that participants in Ontolog Forum might express
> their wish list about features that would be useful for
> supporting ontologies and their applications.
>
> John Sowa
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>    (04)


-- 
Mike Bennett
Director
Hypercube Ltd.
89 Worship Street
London EC2A 2BF
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7917 9522
Mob: +44 (0) 7721 420 730
www.hypercube.co.uk
Registered in England and Wales No. 2461068    (05)


_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    (06)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>