RE: A plea for peace. was: RE: DAML+OIL (March 2001) released: a correction

At 11:09 PM 4/3/01 -0400, Jonathan Borden wrote:
>I guess I'd argue at the phrase "fundamentally flawed" which implies (in
>english) that there is no hope to be fixed. I think RDF is fixable and worth
>fixing.

Jonathan,

I think you and I are following similar paths here.

If I understand Pat correctly, his concern is, in part, that RDF is either 
too much or not enough.  And to fix that requires some significant change 
in the area where the RDF(S) specifications deal with "semantics".

How would it go if we:

(a) described the RDF core as an abstract syntactic framework (the "graph") 
for expressing semantic concepts -- but stopped short of claiming that it 
was a semantic framework, and

(b) reviewed RDFS with a view to defining the simplest possible logical 
framework that could be described as having a consistent semantics -- 
something short of full FOL, but something on which FOL could be built 
consistently, through the addition of additional formal elements.

?

I think (a) would continue to support the existing RDF applications, and 
(b) could give us an opportunity to build a basic semantic framework that 
is correct for developers and logicians.

I appreciated your comments about the "non-Web experiment".  I might 
quibble with some details, but agree with your broad thrust.

#g


------------
Graham Klyne
GK@NineByNine.org

Received on Friday, 6 April 2001 11:29:59 UTC