Names

1. There are two notions of class "name" - an IRI (an IRI is just a Unicode URI), and a browser text aka display name (user-visible name :: arbitrary text)

2. The IRI is intrinsic to the class, whereas the browser text is specified with an rdfs:label property (there is literally a triple in the ontology, eg class_iri --[rdfs:label]--> dog)

3. The browser text is computed as follows:

   a. if there is an rdfs:label, use that b. if there is more than one, pick one arbitrarily (eg. the first) c if not, take some sort of suffix of the entity name (eg. fragment name, or path basename)

4. When the user creates a class in WebProtege, they specify the desired browser text, and WebProtege computes an arbitrary IRI for it (eg. http://webprotege.stanford.edu/).

5. There is no way for a user to change the entity name after the fact; however, they can add and remove rdfs:label properties with wild abandon in the editor.

6. There is a way for users to specify the desired IRI for a new class. In the upper right hand corner, there is an option for the user to control two aspects of IRI creation: the root IRI (eg. http://webprotege.stanford.edu/), and the basename that comes after it (either computed by eg hashing, or taken from the browser text)

   

7. So programmatically speaking, the IRI that is created for a class depends on the settings above.

See also

1. 2014-03-26 discussion on names