Re: summary of reification semantics issues (material for discussion).

Graham--

I agree with what you say about the slipperiness of reification, but not 
with what you say about how helpful the discussion is to the working 
group (or at least to at least a *part* of the working group, namely 
me!).  At the moment, Semantics and the Primer are the only documents 
that try to explain the rationale behind reification, why you might want 
to use it (or why you might *think* you want to use it), and why the 
vocabulary is the way it is.  (Syntax shows some examples of how you 
*do* reification, but doesn't get into *why*).  I certainly agree that 
it's our responsibility to "clarify the existing vocabulary", but I 
don't see how you can do that without getting into this material, and I 
think this requires the sort of discussion that has been going on here.

I have some comments on the technical issues which I'll post in a 
separate message and, if the WG leans in that direction, we can take 
subsequent discussion off-list.

--Frank

Graham Klyne wrote:

> 
> I have the feeling that this statements/statings de re/de dicto issue is 
> not well-enough understood by a wide enough audience to be nailed down 
> in a recommendation at this time.  Real experience is patchy and 
> sometimes contradictory.
> 
> Tim, from what I see, most of your work in this area has been based on 
> N3 formulae rather than the "reification" vocabulary, which are in any 
> case outside "standard" RDF as currently described.  (I happen to like 
> that approach, but that's not the issue here.)
> 
> As a working group, we were faced witj this reification vocabulary that 
> our charter required we had to do something with.  Deprecation was an 
> option, but on balance was not considered right in this case.  I don't 
> think it fundamentally needs to be in the RDF base language (one can 
> invent additional vocabularies for similar purpose, when required), but 
> that's not the starting position we were given.
> 
> In summary, I don't think this discussion is greatly helpful for the 
> *working group* at this time, and that we should clarify the existing 
> vocabulary in a way that is least disruptive, and recognize that it is 
> not the last word on these issues.
> 
> #g
> -- 
> 
> At 16:48 13/03/2003 -0600, pat hayes wrote:
> 
snip


-- 
Frank Manola                   The MITRE Corporation
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Received on Friday, 14 March 2003 07:15:56 UTC