RE: OWL Documents and new WG

Hans Teijgeler wrote:
>Although I am not an "OWL 1.1 Member Submission author" but an OWL 1.0
>implementer (so your future client) I want to respond to your statement:
>"....OWL Reference used RDF/XML examples and had enough of an RDF
>perspective that it could require major revision....".
>
>If that implies that you want to get rid of RDF/XML then please be aware
>that we work every day with that syntax. Changing that to something else
>will steepen (or actually prolong) our learning curve. But if it will bring
>us *real* progress, then we'll have to invest in learning new tricks.

Clearly I suggested things with my email that I didn't intend.  Apologies
to you and others who may have been alarmed by my overstated case in
yesterday's email.  Let me clarify:

One of the few things that I am certain of about an OWL 1.1 Recommendation,
should it come to be, is that it will have RDF/XML as an exchange
syntax, just as OWL 1.0 does.  Furthermore, people like me (and you 
apparently), who use RDF/XML as a presentation syntax will still be able to 
do that.  However, RDF/XML has always had shortcomings as a tool for *people* 
to read and write OWL.  Some of these shortcomings are: 
* it is verbose and
* people often infer things from the syntax that doesn't actually exist in 
  the RDF triples that the syntax serializes.
The are a number of syntaxes in the Member Submission and the charter
mentions additional "user friendly" concrete syntaxes.  Any of these 
might be more appropriate to use in a Reference-like document for OWL 1.1.
In my previous email I was trying to solicit feedback from the Member
Submission authors on this question as well as how Reference might fit
with the proposed language design and envisioned document set.

-Evan

Received on Thursday, 18 January 2007 16:51:42 UTC