- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:03:18 -0500
- To: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>
- Cc: John McClure <jmcclure@hypergrove.com>, Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>, Owl Dev <public-owl-dev@w3.org>
>Pat Hayes wrote: >> >>> >>>>But rdf:ID doesn't get you *any sort of >>>>declaration*. It's *just a funny way of making an assertion*. >>> >>>Nope, I don't agree -- I don't see this in the specs anywhere. >> >>Well, the RDF specs say explicitly that RDF consists entirely of >>assertions, they give a normative semantics which defines the >>assertions, and they do not mention declarations anywhere. Seems >>pretty damn clear to me. > >Yup, if you're looking for "declarations", you might try to see it >social wrappings around pure formal RDF. Like if I use RDFS/OWL to >describe some classes and properties, then write that out as an >RDF/XML UTF-8 document and publish it, then mail semantic-web@w3.org >and say ... 'hey everyone, use my new ontology'. Perhaps after all >that we could say the classes and properties have been declared? RDF >no more has declarations than it has lies; but people can lie and >declare using RDF. I think you are mixing up asserting - a speech act, claiming a sentence to be true by saying (or publishing) it - and declaring in the sense I think its being used here, analogous to a declaration in a programming language. The latter has some kind of special significance for parsing and errors. I agree RDF doesn't have explicit assertion or denial, etc., but there is an emerging social/Web consensus that publication is tantamount to assertion, which I think is what you are talking about here. Pat > ><rdf:Property rdf:ID="permits"/> in an RDF/XML document >http://example.com/somerdf ...might be read as somehow ensuring that >the URI for the term "permits" that it expands to is new, previously >unused, etc. And I guess this is why it gets seen as a declaration, >since it gives (illusory) impression we can be sure that whoever >wrote this is the first to do so. That assumptio is a mistake, since >the interaction with xml:base allows pre-existing properties and >classes to be further described via rdf:ID. > >cheers, > >Dan > >ps. testcase: > ><rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" > xml:base="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" > xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" >> ><rdf:Property rdf:ID="permits" >dc:description="assertions about cc:permits go here, but if anyone >'declared' it, it wasn't me."/> ></rdf:RDF> > >gives 2 triples: > >http://creativecommons.org/ns#permits >http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type >http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property . > >http://creativecommons.org/ns#permits >http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/description "assertions about >cc:permits go here, but if anyone 'declared' it, it wasn't me." . -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Sunday, 12 August 2007 20:03:31 UTC