Re: comments on concepts doc

Brian

I hope that Graham and I will be able to work out a detailed response soon -
however I wanted to make a high level comment, partly because I feel
relatively neutral and can see both sides of a philosophical disagreement.

Back in July
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2002Jul/0081.html
we had extended e-mail and telecon time on this document, with the main
contention being its scope and purpose.

Some of Graham's original hopes were scaled back, but I don't think your
puritanism (which I could support) was endorsed by the WG.

I felt that there was support for some of Frank's recorded comments:

14:45:38 <dajobe-la> fmanola: material in M&S which was explantory in nature
which has exlcuded from other specs
14:45:59 <dajobe-la> ... and should be kept around, but primer was being
overloaded - too long
14:46:37 <dajobe-la> .. needed a different home but end up with a kind of
scrapbook
14:46:57 <dajobe-la> ... so need to fill it out to make it look more
coherent
14:47:04 <dajobe-la> which tends to duplicate other stuff


I believe that Graham and I should look at whether your comments can help us
reduce duplication, but I do not believe that the WG wants the normative
documents to be anoerexic; and I will be very surprised if we accept all of
your comments.

Personally I would support an editorial style across our normative Recs
which said that discursive and non-normative material is, where possible,
omitted. This would impact all the specs except for vocabulary, and maybe
test cases. I think syntax would be approx halved, concepts possibly more
serverely, the model theory would be somewhat thinned - the proposed lbase
appendix would be aborted. I doubt that such a policy would get wg support,
not least because too many of the WG are editors who would lose some of the
text with which they intend to educate the world. A further problem with
such a policy is that at least parts of our discursive material (such as the
introductory parts of the model theory) have been very well received. (In
fact, if we were to have such a policy, I would hope an exception would be
made for that part of the model theory).

I might need to consult with the ink and toner divisions before casting HP's
vote for such a policy.

As always, there is time pressure; and given that we haven't had such a
policy as clear in advance I think it is unrealistic to expect the next
batch of WD to follow it.

Jeremy

Received on Tuesday, 29 October 2002 03:28:34 UTC