Re: same-syntax extensions to RDF

waw Bijan!
I haven't experienced most of your issues, both as developer and
as user i.e. even not a while ago
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004Aug/0024.html

[[
found a proof using the E prover
http://www4.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~schulz/WORK/eprover.html
for the OWL test case
http://www.w3.org/2002/03owlt/description-logic/inconsistent502.rdf
which we translated into
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004Aug/att-0024/inconsistent502.tstp
and the proof is
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004Aug/att-0024/inconsistent502-proof.tstp

(both are in the TSTP format
http://www.cs.miami.edu/~tptp/TSTP/
but that can be connected to the "proof bus" using N3)
]]

we can't find that proof with euler but can convert it
back to N3 and use it's triples, well given that
{{:a :b :c} :d :e. {:f :g :h} :i :j} :k {{:l :m :n} :o :p}.
is 1 triple with nested triples and respecting

  whenever, in a sentence, we wish to say something
  about a certain thing, we have to use, in this
  sentence, not the thing itself but its name or
  designation -- Alfred Tarski

So I believe that all those "certain things" are
rdfs resources, wether they be {} or literal values
or URI referenced things, the names are just
different designations.

-- 
Jos De Roo, AGFA http://www.agfa.com/w3c/jdroo/




Bijan Parsia <bparsia@isr.umd.edu>
Sent by: www-rdf-logic-request@w3.org
04/01/2005 13:43

 
        To:     www-rdf-logic@w3.org
        cc:     (bcc: Jos De_Roo/AMDUS/MOR/Agfa-NV/BE/BAYER)
        Subject:        Re: same-syntax extensions to RDF



Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>  wrote:
> "R.V.Guha" <guha@guha.com> wrote:
[snip]
>>  This infatuation with reducing everything to RDF is at best
>>  amusing.
>
> Really?

Nope. I would say that it's not even at best amusing.

> Don't you find it useful that so much can be stated in RDF?

And this evidences why: not much *can* be *stated* in RDF. That so much 
is required to be straightjacketed (aka, encoded) in RDF is just 
painful, not merely useless. What exactly is it useful for?

It complicates almost *everything*. If you aren't feeling the pain then 
I would submit that you are cheating somewhere. I speak as implementor 
or co-implementor of a number of tools, both purely research and 
nigh-production.

What's really distressing is how much time ends up RDFing about syntax, 
something RDF is especially poor at (both at being and at expressing). 
Instead of eliminating the need to write parsers, it complicates the 
parser writing task enormously *AND* robs us of almost all our tools! 
(XML stylesheets...anyone?) As an example, I challenge you to write a 
program to convert the concepts in an owl ontology into negation normal 
form. This is a *trivial* transformation, but a very important one. In 
fact, almost any straightforward normalization task is made way more 
complicated.

>  I find
> RDF data very nice to work with.

I've found that not to be true for either implementors or users or 
developers (using RDF toolkits). Where it is true, the tasks in 
question are either ABoxy tasks (so things are fine) or involve either 
misunderstanding or a cheat (often unknowingly).

When we use RDF this way we treat it as if it were XML. XML without 
DTDs even. Without well-formedness!

(Note that I've not even touched how brutally tiresome it makes the 
semantics, even when the semantics works.)

(Note that I've not even touched how painful it is for people I've 
taught. We almost always end up falling back on standard logic syntax. 
This is not Turtle vs. RDF/XML...it's not the awful xml serialization 
alone, it's the relentless triplization.)

So, it sucks for authoring; in sucks for 
parsing/rendering/tranforming/reasoning/storing/querying; it sucks for 
reading; it sucks for teaching; it sucks for extending; it sucks for 
metatheory.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.

Received on Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:58:02 UTC