Re: MISC: Internet Media Type registration: proposed TAG finding

From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
Subject: Re: MISC: Internet Media Type registration: proposed TAG finding
Date: 23 May 2002 22:08:16 -0500

> On Thu, 2002-05-23 at 19:14, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:

[...]

> > For example, I could claim that pfps:Truth is a part of RDF, whose intended
> > meaning is the type of all true propositions in first-order logic.  Does
> > mean that RDF captures first-order truth?  Not at all!
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'captures', but yes, your pfps schema/spec
> would provide a term that folks can use to claim, in RDF syntax,
> that things are first-order truths.
> 
> It wouldn't be unprecedented, by the way:
> 
>   http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/log#Truth
> 
> > > These
> > > informal prose documents, e.g. the dublin core spec,
> > > still have semantics: they still divide interpretations
> > > into true and false.
> > 
> > Sure, but this informal part is *not* part of RDF.
> 
> I accept that as your opinion. I disagree.
> Perhaps if you'd share the argument that leads
> you to that conclusion, we could discuss it further.

Well, I was going to say the following that there was nothing in the RDF
specification that would sanction the inclusion of user-written prose in the
meaning of RDF documents.  However, then I re-read the RDFSS, and found 

      rdfs:comment

      The <code>rdfs:comment</code> property is used to provide a
      human-readable description of a resource.

      A textual comment helps clarify the meaning of RDF classes
      and properties. Such inline documentation complements the use
      of both formal techniques (Ontology and rule languages) and
      informal (prose documentation, examples, test cases). A
      variety of documentation forms can be combined to indicate
      the intended meaning of the classes and properties described
      in an RDF Schema.

      Multilingual documentation of schemas is supported at the
      syntactic level through use of the <code>xml:lang</code>
      language tagging facility. Since RDF schemas are expressed as
      RDF graphs, vocabularies defined in other namespaces may be
      used to provide richer documentation.

So, I do have to agree that in a certain sense, RDFS (not RDF itself,
however) *does* indeed bring the meaning of user-written prose into the
meaning of its documents.  Further, I believe that the creators of RDFS did
indeed want this prose to affect the meaning of RDFS documents.  Sorry,
Pat, you will have to redo your model theory document.

Hmmm.  Let me think about this. ...

I, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, an employee of Lucent Technologies, Inc., a
member of the W3C, do believe that the RDF Vocabulary Description Language
1.0: RDF Schema candidate recommendation is dangerously complicated.  I
will instruct Lucent Technologies, Inc., to vote against the acceptance of
any proposal that includes language similar to the language for
rdfs:comment given above.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Friday, 24 May 2002 07:06:48 UTC