ISO/DIS 24627-3

DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD
ISO/DIS 24627-3
ISO/TC 37/SC 4 Secretariat: KATS
Voting begins on: Voting terminates on:
2020-03-31 2020-06-23
Language resource management — Comprehensive
Annotation Framework (ComAF) —
Part 3:
Diagrammatic semantic authoring (DSA)
ICS: 01.020
THIS DOCUMENT IS A DRAFT CIRCULATED
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This document is circulated as received from the committee secretariat.
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NATIONAL REGULATIONS.
ISO/DIS 24627-3:2020(E)
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ISO/DIS 24627-3:2020(E)
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Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................iv

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................v

1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1

2 Terms and definitions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

3 Specification .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1

Annex A (Informative) Examples .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 8

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This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, language and terminology,

Graphs (diagrams consisting of nodes and links) have been used for decades to represent and visualize

both documents (instance data) and data schemas. This standard, DSA, concerns graph-based

Graph-based representation and visualization of documents are addressed by concept maps, mind

maps, argument maps, and so on. Theoretical linguistics and artificial intelligence have also used

graph-based content visualization associated with semantic network, mental space, discourse

Graph-based visualization of data schemas (or ontologies, terminologies, metamodels, etc.) is a more

usual practice. Ontologies are often visualized as graphs in which nodes are classes (and datatypes)

and links are properties (relations). ISO 24156-1 specifies a UML-based visualization of concept

This standard, DSA (Diagrammatic Semantic Authoring), is to specify a data schema of graph documents

to facilitate composition and comprehension by making logical document structure explicit. It neither

specifies visualizations or manipulations of graphs nor defines annotations to existing documents, but

specifies graphical/diagrammatic representation of documents for the sake of semantic authoring:

i.e., for people to directly view and manipulate syntactic/semantic structures on computer displays or

their future alternatives. The linearity of traditional text documents is due to the linearity of speech

languages, which constrains the interaction between people and documents, making it hard for people

to read and write. DSA defines graphical/diagrammatic documents with more explicit structures than

in text in order to make it easier for people to read and write. DSA documents, together with some

user interfaces involving appropriate visualizations and easy operations, could enhance collaborations

Figure 1.1 shows a workflow involving DSA and other types of documents. The DSA documents in the

upper half could be automatically converted (while preserving propositional content) to and from

machine-understandable documents based on appropriate standards on semantic representations and

annotations. It is possible to automatically generate traditional text documents from these machine-

understandable documents (while preserving the propositional content, too), though the inverse

conversion cannot generally be automated. Since DSA documents (together with some appropriate user

interfaces) are easier for people to compose and interpret than text documents, people may usually

touch and see DSA documents whereas traditional documents could be used for legacy procedures

DSA is a minimal metamodel for SemAF-DS (ISO TS 24617-5), which in turn is based on Linguistic DS

(Description Scheme) in MPEG-7 (ISO/IEC 15938.5:2003/Amd.1:2004). The machine-understandable

documents in Figure 1.1 are assumed to use other standards devised by ISO/TC37/SC4, among others,

including SynAF (ISO 24615:2010), LAF (ISO 24615:2010) and SemAF, while also incorporating

DSA specifies how to represent (not visualize) documents (instance data, not data schemas) as graphs. It

does not specify how to visualize or operate on document data, but it aims at making documents easier

for people to compose and comprehend by allowing for various graph-based flexible user interfaces

possibly incorporating document-visualization practices mentioned above. In this connection, DSA

does not specify annotations to existing documents either, but specifies a schema of documents with

DSA mainly deals with syntactic or document structures, in order to help people intuitively understand

the outline of documents, thereby efficiently compose them and collaborate with one another. It

addresses some fragmentary semantic structures as well, but more systematic semantics (formal

mapping between documents and their meanings or logical forms) will be provided by another

specification so that machines better ‘understand’ DSA documents and thereby better assist information

ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:

Figure 4.1 shows DSA, which is a metamodel (ontology) of graph documents. Each mark