- From: Jacco van Ossenbruggen <Jacco.van.Ossenbruggen@cwi.nl>
- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:41:57 +0100
- To: public-owl-comments@w3.org
Dear OWL WG, I apologise that these comments are provided to you after the deadline. I hope you will still be able to consider them. I have noticed that I, and a considerable number of my colleagues, have been confused about the status of the OWL 2 XML syntax. Various of the 11 documents contain references to this syntax by referring to document [1]. This document starts with a _normative_ overview of the syntax, which does not mention that supporting this syntax is actually not required by a conforming OWL 2 application. This, in combination with the fact that the text is normative, lead me to believe that the XML Syntax is intended as the main serialization syntax for OWL 2 documents. This believe was even enforced by the total lack of examples given in RDF/XML or any other triple syntax. Only when someone (thanks Ivan!) pointed me explicitly to the little conformance para hidden in section 2.1 of [2], I realized I was mistaken. I am not sure how to fix this problem. I find the whole concept of a _normative_ specification for an _optional_ feature quite confusing, and would like to see the entire document [1] to be changed to non- normative. The overview section of [1] should clearly state that this syntax is optional, and that RDF/XML remains the preferred syntax to ensure interoperability with other RDF and OWL 1 applications. All examples in all documents _should_ be provided using a triple-based syntax, other syntaxes _could_ be made available on the reader's request.. I hope these comments will improve the OWL 2 specs, Regards, Jacco van Ossenbruggen [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-owl2-xml-serialization-20081202/ [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-owl2-test-20081202/#Conformance_.28Normative.29
Received on Thursday, 12 February 2009 08:42:43 UTC