SWRL

Hello,

I am taking this opportunity to comment as a member of the public on the
SWRL proposal. I apologise if my comments are ill informed - if so,
please ignore them :)

My general comment is that this document in particular and the XML
community in general seem too pre occupied with syntax and parsing,
which are are non-issues. General purpose parsers for general purpose
grammars have been around for 40 years, and are freely available in all
common languages (I use CUP for java). 

In particular, whats gained by the awkward abstract syntax? Why not just
use the human readable syntax - it seems perfectly clear to me. And what
is gained by breaking everything into bits in XML? It doesn't make it
any easier to process - quite the contrary.  For the concrete XML syntax
I would suggest something along the lines of

<rule> 
  parent(x,y) and brother(y,z) => uncle(z,x)
</rule >

Using a parser generator like java CUP I can write a parser for this
syntax in 10 minutes.

Tim Glover