Re: Looking for description of PowerLoom built-in ontology

On Feb 21, 2007, at 6:44 PM, Cameron Ross wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Where can I find a description of the ontology built into PowerLoom.
> For example, the manula describes a number of built-in relations,  
> but a
> description of THING, COLLECTION, SET, STRING etc. are not provided.

Hmmm.  Looks like a misfeature in the documentation generation
code we use.  Since that was originally designed to document the
underlying Stella language, it prefers class definitions over concept
definitions when they have the same name.

I'll provide those for you here:

  COLLECTION: The class of all collections.  This includes all sets,
     lists, concepts, and relations.

  THING: The class of all things.  `Thing' is the top-most concept
     in the concept hierarchy.

  SET: This class denotes the mathematical notion of a 'set';
     a collection that has no duplicates.

  LIST: A list is an ordered collection of elements.  The range
    of the function `listof' consists of elements of type `List'.

  STRING:  No documentation, but this is just the native
      String datatype of the underlying implementation.
      INTEGER and FLOAT are similar.  Floats are double-floats
      in the underlying language.  NUMBER is an abstract superconcept.

  RELATION: The class of relations.  This includes all concepts and
      all functions.


You may also want to use Ontosaurus to examine the PL-KERNEL-KB.
Ontosaurus will show the concept documentation strings.

You can find links to the servers from the main PowerLoom web page:
   <http://www.isi.edu/isd/LOOM/PowerLoom/index.html>