2nd Draft response to LC comment 30 (FH4)

After the discussion yesterday, here is my draft. (The wiki page has
also been updated).

Ivan

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To: Frank van Harmelen <Frank.van.Harmelen@cs.vu.nl>
CC: public-owl-comments@w3.org
Subject: [LC response] To Frank van Harmelen

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your comment

<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/2009Jan/0037.html>
on the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language last call drafts.

We also note the 'addendum' to your original comment in

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/2009Feb/0014.html

And we thank you for helping us avoiding further confusion on this issue.

Indeed, as you note in your second mail, the current Functional Syntax
(FS) notation uses the _:x syntax to denote anonymous individuals. This
is a consequence of the way the new, functional syntax works.

The primary motivation of changing from the OWL 1 abstract syntax (AS)
to the OWL 2 FS was that the FS is closer to the syntax used in first
order logic, which makes various specification issues as well as
relating OWL 2 abstract constructs to the general literature easier. As
the primary role of the FS is to _define_ the structure of OWL 2 (and
not necessarily to serve as a serialization syntax), the clarity of the
syntax was an important factor for choosing it.

As for the usability of AS in OWL 2: if used as an exchange syntax then,
of course, OWL 1 ontologies written in AS may be input to OWL 2 tools
and remain valid ontologies. But we must emphasize that this is an issue
of the tool providers: the only _required_ exchange syntax for OWL 2
ontologies being RDF/XML, it is up to the tools to decide whether they
would accept ontologies serialized in AS (or in FS, for that matter).

We hope this answers your concerns on this particular issue

Please acknowledge receipt of this email to
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are satisfied with the working group's response to your comment.

Regards,
Ivan Herman
on behalf of the W3C OWL Working Group

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
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