Definitions Tree

The Definitions Tree provides a hierarchical view of all RDF terms that are defined in the active document. It shows all subjects which are supported ontology or taxonomy types and enables you to quickly navigate to their definitions or execute commands on them.

Title Bar

The tree view is titled ‘Definitions’ and shows the currently active language tag for the displayed node labels. With definitions we refer to all RDF resources that are either defined as subjects in the current document or referenced by it and where the resource type was inferenced by the structural reasoner.

Primary Actions

The definitions tree offers several actions that are visible as icons in the title bar:

Action	Description
Select Language	Selects the currently active language for the definitions tree.
Refresh Tree	Manually refreshes the definitions tree to reflect any recent changes in the files.
Collapse / Expand All	Collapse or Expand all nodes in the definitions tree.

More Actions

Additional actions that can be accessed through the menu in the titlebar:

Action	Description
Show / Hide Referenced Resources	Toggles the visibility of resources that are not defined as subjects in the current document, but are referenced by it.
Group by Source of Definition	Toggles if classes, properties etc. should additionally be grouped by their source of definition, e.g. the ontology or taxonomy they are defined in.
Group by Type	Toggles if classes, properties etc. should be grouped ‘flat’ in a single node per type.
Show Annotated Labels	Toggles if the tree should display labels that are annotated with RDF predicates for each node.
Show URI Labels	Toggles if the tree should always display the URI local names for each node.
Show URI Labels with Prefixes	Toggles if the tree should display the URI local names with their prefixes for each node, if a prefix is defined.
Settings	Opens the Mentor settings where you can configure various options related to the definitions tree and indexing.

Tree Display

This section describes the details of how nodes are being displayed and how this can be customised:

Node Labels

The displayed name of nodes in the definition tree is determined by looking for a configurable set of label predicates. This is the default option and referred to as ‘Annotated Labels’ in the tree view settings.

In this mode, the displayed labels also consider language tags, preferring labels that match the currently set active language which is indicated in the title section of the tree view. The active language can be changed by clicking on the button in the tree title bar.

The predicates which are used for displaying the node labels can be configured in the settings. By default, Mentor uses the following preferred label predicates in order of priority:

1. http://purl.org/dc/terms/title
2. http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title
3. http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefLabel
4. http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label
5. https://schema.org/name
6. http://schema.org/name
7. http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#name
8. http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#path

If no label can be found, the local name of the IRI is used as a fallback.

You can also choose to always display the local name of the IRI instead of looking for annotated labels, or to display prefixed names if a prefix is declared for the namespace of the IRI. These options can be found in the menu of the tree view.

Definition Source Grouping

By default, the defined terms are grouped by the ontology or concept scheme they are part of. This is either determined by a shared namespace with an ontology header definition or by explicit rdfs:isDefinedBy annotations in the document. If no source of definition can be found, the terms are grouped under Unknown.

When available, the value of owl:versionInfo is also shown to indicate the version of an ontology.

There is also an option to turn-off grouping in the tree settings, which will show all defined terms grouped by their type, regardless in which ontology / concept scheme they are defined. This option is called Group by Type and can be toggled in the menu of the tree view.

Referenced Resources

It is quite common for ontologies or vocabularies to reference terms which are defined elsewhere, such as external ontologies such as RDF, RDFS or OWL. To be able to see which terms are actually defined in the document, Mentor renders the referenced terms in a shaded color to distinguish them from locally defined terms.

The greyed out items in the above screenshot are not defined in the current document, which means there is no rdf:type statement with the respective subject.

Ontology

The tree features support for common ontology types such as classes, properties, and individuals and specialised types from the OWL and SHACL vocabularies.

RDFS, OWL

To support correct display of subclass relationships, Mentor applies structural reasoning to the ontology terms defined in the document. This means that if a class is defined as an OWL restriction or equivalent class, Mentor will infer its subclass relationships based on the OWL semantics.

Icon	Type
	Ontology
	Class
	Class with Individuals
	Individual
	Object Property
	Datatype Property with range1 of xsd:datetime or xsd:date
	Datatype Property with range1 xsd:boolean
	Datatype Property with range1 xsd:integer or xsd:decimal
	Datatype Property with range1 xsd:string or no explicit range

¹The range is determined either by the rdfs:range or the sh:datatype predicates.

SHACL

The Definitions Tree also recognises SHACL shapes defined in the document. The tree provides actions to navigate to shape definitions and displaying datatypes for property shapes.

Icon	Type
	Node Shape
	Property Shape

Taxonomy

The tree also supports SKOS terminology, such as concepts, concept schemes and collections. Similar to ontology terms, taxonomy terms are grouped by their source of definition. If no concept scheme is found, the terms are grouped under an Unknown category.

SKOS

Icon	Type
	Concept Scheme
	Concept
	Collection
	Ordered Collection

Settings

The following settings can be used to configure the Definitions Tree:

mentor.predicates.label An array of RDF predicates that are used to determine the labels for nodes in the Definitions Tree.

mentor.predicates.description An array of RDF predicates that are used to determine the descriptions for nodes in tooltips.

mentor.definitionTree.labelStyle Controls the display style of labels in the Definitions Tree.

mentor.definitionTree.defaultLayout Set the standard style for rendering the definitions tree hierarchy.

mentor.definitionTree.defaultLanguageTag Set the default language tag for rendering labels and descriptions in the definitions tree and tooltips.