alternative syntaxes

Again, following on from earlier comments, we are not at all convinced by the WG position on alternative syntaxes:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/2009Mar/0050.html
[[

Manchester Syntax: This is not a Last Call Working Draft, and the  
working group has decided that it will not be part of the  
recommendation but will be published as a working group note. It may  
be worth pointing out, however, that it is widely used, e.g., in  
TopBraid Composer, the Protege editor and the OWL 2 Primer.

OWL/XML: It should be noted that RDF/XML is the only syntax that MUST  
be supported by implementations; support for the XML syntax is not  
required (see also FH3). The XML syntax is motivated by the desire to  
support OWL users who want better interoperability with XML based  
tools and languages, for example WSDL. An additional benefit is that  
XML data can be exposed to RDF/OWL applications using GRDDL (see  
[15]). We will extend NF&R to better motivate the need for an XML  
syntax.
]]

And the table at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-owl2-overview-20090421/#Syntaxes

1) The idea that a syntax for which a mimetype is registered is informative seems like double-think and playing a game with different venues.
e.g. the following mimetype registration document clearly is intended to be read as normative, and would be an appropriate normative reference
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4374.txt

2) It is well known that increasing options decreases interoperability
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/REC-qaframe-spec-20050817/#option


In particular, we see OWL/XML as likely to reduce practical interoperability between OWL and RDF systems and this loss will outweigh any benefit.

Again, this is a matter we will take forward to formal objection.

Jeremy Carroll, AC Rep, TopQuadrant

Received on Tuesday, 12 May 2009 22:09:53 UTC