[DL] Designing Visual Languages for Description Logics

[Dr Brian R Gaines]

I have a paper entitle "Designing Visual Languages for Description 
Logics" for a special issue on visual languages for logic that will 
appear in JOLLI (Journal of Logic, Language and Information), and 
have just revised it in response to referees' comments. However, I 
realized that none of the comments I have received were from a DL 
perspective and would welcome some if anyone on this list has the 
time and interest to read it.

The paper is available at 
http://cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~gaines/reports/KBS/VLDL/VLDL.pdf and the 
abstract is:-

Description logics originated from the formalization of semantic 
networks as visual languages representing decidable subsets of first 
order logic (FOL) useful in knowledge representation. Later research 
on description logics has focused on issues of tractability of 
subsets of FOL with differing representation capabilities, and on the 
implementation of practical systems achieving the best possible 
performance. Semantic network research needs to keep pace with these 
developments in description logic and provide humanly attractive 
representation capabilities for knowledge entry, editing, and 
presenting the results of inference, that translate unambiguously to 
the underlying description logics. This paper discusses the design 
issues for such semantic network formalisms, and illustrates them 
through detailed examples of significant knowledge structures 
analyzed in the literature, including determinables, contrast sets, 
genus/differentiae, taxonomies, faceted taxonomies, cluster concepts, 
family resemblances, graded concepts, frames, definitions, rules, 
rules with exceptions, essence and state assertions, opposites and 
contraries, relevance, and so on. Such examples provide important 
test material for any visual language formalism for logic, enabling 
the role of visualization in understanding and communicating the 
major issues relating to them to be assessed.

Any comments welcome. JOLLI has published little on DLs and it would 
be good to be accurate and representative in what is said, especially 
if there is related work that should be cited that I have missed, b.