Re: [Relevant for all] options for the RDF representation of ITS 2.0

Hi Felix and all,

My replies and further clarifications are inline below.

Cheers -- Jörg

On Aug 13, 2013 at 19:31 (CEST), Felix Sasaki wrote:
> Hi Jörg, all,
>
> Am 13.08.13 19:19, schrieb Jörg Schütz:
>> Hi Felix and all,
>>
>> Independently of the EU funding timeline
>
> We cannot discuss this without the EU funding timeline in mind, since if
> we push ITS2 after December 2013, the whole standardization effort will
> fail.
>

Okay, that's a project internal consideration which wasn't in my focus.

>> , and after some indepth discussions with possible industrial early
>> adopters of ITS 2.0
>
> Could you please name these adopters? It is hard to decide how much
> weight to give to opinions if you don't know who is making the statement
> - in addition to Bioloom.
>

As said, there are possible early adopters, and they don't want to 
disclose their names at this stage. Most of them are software and 
services companies from different application areas ranging from ALM 
over BI to the medical and pharmaceutical sectors. They are looking for 
solutions to maintain and optimize their multilingual content 
lifecycles. This disclosing strategy shall also contribute to not foster 
any sort of lobbying.

>> , I would suggest to follow your proposed solution 2a). The reasons are:
>>
>> (1) Having a non-normative section on NIF (i.e. solution 1) looks
>> apparently inappropriate because of the depth of the already existing
>> description.
>
> There are a lot of specifications in many technical areas that are
> defining things indepth - without being normative. So I can't follow
> this argument.
>

This situation might be true, and is an excellent example of were 
standards failed being as concise and succinct as possible. The more you 
put in a standard that is informative only, the more the audience gets 
lost in the specification because they are overloaded with information 
that does not contribute to a normative realization or implementation of 
the standard.

>> In this case, it should rather be handled like the XLIFF mapping, i.e.
>> remove it from the ITS 2.0 specification.
>
> We did promise the following in our charter
> http://www.w3.org/2012/09/mlw-lt-charter.html
> "The MultilingualWeb-LT WG will assure that the metadata approach being
> developed is allowing a conversion to RDF, to foster integration of
> MultilingualWeb-LT metadata into the Semantic Web."
>
> I see this as an argument to keep things as is, since we name "a
> conversion to RDF". We never had XLIFF mappings in scope for the spec
> itself. So I can't hardly follow the comparison.
> Also, from a "community building" point of view, it will be very harmful
> to first have the NIF feature inside ITS 2.0 and then pull it out again.
>

The charter does not promise that the conversion to RDF will be part of 
the W3C standard, and therefore the goal is already achieved, and we 
have to decide on how the accomplished solution is presented, i.e. 
within the specification as a specialized normative section (solution 2a 
with W3C URIs), or an informative section (solution 1), or even outside 
the specification at all (one possible solution 2b).
I cannot see that any of these solutions might be harmful from a 
community building perspective because that's part of the general 
standardization process be it a W3C process or any other standardization 
process even within a certain industrial community that builds a 
de-facto standard.
However, fact is that the RDF mapping that has been accomplished through 
the NIF based approach is presented in the ITS Working Draft as 
normative, and now the situation is that we have to backpedal on that 
status.

>> This solution would give NIF a less prominent position, and does not
>> reflect the continuous discussions on adopting the NIF approach in
>> ITS. Therefore it would be something like a "graceful degradation",
>> i.e. it wouldn't harm but we would lose momentum.
>
> I would see a lot of harm, see the "community building" above. Just
> think of the time the NIF community with Sebastian in the center (but
> not only him, see e.g. contributors to the test suite in guithub)
> already put into NIF in ITS - with the current URIs.
>

All these efforts have significantly contributed and will further 
contribute to a successful evolution of ITS and the RDF mapping in the 
future. Therefore, again I can't see any harm, except maybe some 
personal disappointment.

>>
>> (2) Since we will have yet another LC anyway, a solution on how to
>> deal with NIF doesn't have an influence on the overall W3C process of
>> ITS 2.0.
>
> Agree.
>
>>
>> (3) Adopting the proposed 6 URIs and the ontology of NIP represents a
>> relatively stable and approved (through the existing implementations)
>> release of NIF which is mostly appropriate to normatively demonstrate
>> its fitness for deployment, although in the future it would represent
>> only a certain NIF evolution branch. Here, we have to see how the W3C
>> URIs could be maintained to benefit from future NIF incarnations and
>> developments, for example through certain services that support
>> evolutionary states.
>
> Here I disagree, see my response
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-multilingualweb-lt/2013Aug/0021.html
>
> to David's mail.
>

This depends on how we actually implement the relationship and the 
collaborative efforts between ITS-NIF and NIF as maintained by Leipzig 
university. For me that would be an important challenge for employing 
linked data capabilities within co-existing ecosystems. So in summary, 
personally I am still in favor of solution 2a) but I could also accept a 
solution 2b) to move the ITS-NIF description to a prominent other place, 
and even solution 1) although the information overload with a 
non-normative complex subject is a kind of hurdle for the overall 
comprehensibility of the specification which might lead to slower 
acceptance.

>>
>> I hope this helps a bit in finding an eventual community supported
>> solution.
>
> It does, thank you for your thoughts.
>
> Best,
>
> Felix
>
>>
>> Talk to you tomorrow, and all the best,
>>
>> Jörg
>>
>> On Aug 12, 2013 at 08:42 (CEST), Felix Sasaki wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> this mail is relevant for the general progress of ITS 2.0. Please have a
>>> look even if you are not interested in the RDF representation of ITS
>>> 2.0.
>>>
>>> At
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-multilingualweb-lt/2013Aug/0009.html
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I had explained changes to be done to move ITS 2.0. forward. The change
>>> "make NIF a *non* normative reference" is actually just one option to
>>> reply to this requirement from our charter
>>> http://www.w3.org/2012/09/mlw-lt-charter.html
>>>
>>> "The MultilingualWeb-LT WG will assure that the metadata approach being
>>> developed is allowing a conversion to RDF, to foster integration of
>>> MultilingualWeb-LT metadata into the Semantic Web."
>>>
>>> This requirement does not say that we define a normative approach to
>>> allow for that conversion. My mail at
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-multilingualweb-lt/2013Aug/0009.html
>>>
>>>
>>> was suggesting to use NIF as the non normative approach.
>>>
>>> With this mail I want to bring all options clearly in front of the
>>> working group and see what you think. Please have a look at let's decide
>>> on Wednesday how to move forward. Until then, the edit announced in the
>>> 0009 mail is on hold.
>>>
>>> So the options are
>>>
>>> 1) Have a non-normative reference to NIF, as suggested in the 0009 mail
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2) Intent to have a standardized, that is normative RDF representation
>>> of ITS2. This could then not be NIF. It could be
>>>
>>>
>>> 2a) something based on NIF, e.g. moving the six URIs that we rely on (+
>>> the ontology file?)
>>>
>>>           1.
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core#Context
>>>           2.
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core#RFC5147String
>>>
>>>
>>>           3.
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core#beginIndex
>>>
>>>           4.
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core#endIndex
>>>           5.
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core#referenceContext
>>>
>>>
>>>           6.
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core#isString
>>>           7. The ontology file that defines these URIs (= RDF classes +
>>>              properties)
>>> http://persistence.uni-leipzig.org/nlp2rdf/ontologies/nif-core/version-1.0/nif-core.ttl
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> into the W3C namespace and define the URIs + the ontology as normative
>>> part of ITS2. But it could also be
>>>
>>>
>>> 2b) something completely different, yet to be defined. Issue
>>> https://www.w3.org/International/multilingualweb/lt/track/issues/18 made
>>> clear that it cannot be RDFa.
>>>
>>>
>>> Above options are hard to evaluate since we have the EU funding based
>>> timeline. But to move forward we need a working group opinion. Please
>>> state your thoughts in this thread.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Felix
>>>

Received on Wednesday, 14 August 2013 09:32:07 UTC