Re: Manchester syntax track

On 10 Dec 2008, at 16:38, Sandro Hawke wrote:

> [I'm not sure why you switched from public-owl-wg to public-owl-dev,
> Uli, but I guess I'll reply where you sent it...]

(I think it was fatfingering.)

>> On 9 Dec 2008, at 20:22, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>>
>>> My sense is that making it Rec Track would amount to the WG saying
>>> "everyone who wants a human-readable serialization for OWL 2 SHOULD
>>> use
>>> the Manchester Syntax."
>>
>> Are you sure? How comes it wouldn't say "everyone who wants a human-
>> readable serialization for OWL 2 SHOULD *consider* to use the
>> Manchester Syntax -- yet everybody is free to invent their own, e.g.,
>> application-specific or language-specific one. Moreover, if you claim
>> you support Manchester Syntax, this is what you should be  
>> supporting."
>
> Yes, I'm sure.
>
> I guess there's some ambiguity here:
>
>     W3C publishes Recommendations when it believes that the ideas  
> in the
>     technical report are appropriate for widespread deployment and  
> that
>     they promote W3C's mission.
>       -- http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr.html#rec- 
> publication
>
> It's not clear there exactly how widespead they mean, but my
> understanding is that a specification becoming a Recommendation  
> reflects
> consensus within the Consortium that *everyone* who wants to
> interoperate

E.g., on Manchester Syntax, not on arbitrary human readable syntax.

> (in some area of Web functionality) SHOULD conform to that
> spec.

I think if you are doing something Manchester Syntax like (e.g., as  
compared to a CNL), then you SHOULD use Manchester syntax since it's  
documented, used in many tools, tutorials, etc.

I mean, that's what I would say if someone asked me. Why invent  
another (even though there's plenty I don't like about Man syntax)?

[snip]
> If we just want people to "consider" it, and to have a stable
> specification they can implement if they like, then it's published  
> as a
> Member Submission, Team Submission, or Working Group Note.  (The  
> choice
> among those three being determined by who is proposing it.  With these
> publicatiions, there's no need to assess consensus across W3C that  
> it's
> the right solution.)

I guess I'm unclear on what you think the scope of the recommendation  
is. It's definitely not "if you write OWL you SHOULD use Manchester  
syntax". I don't think it's "If you want to write OWL in a human  
readable way you SHOULD use Manchester syntax" since, for example, in  
RDF communities Turtle is a better choice. But I don't see a  
fundamental problem with it being "If you want to use an Englishy  
notational variant of OWL, then you should use this".

[snip]
> It seems to me that can all be done, just fine, with a Working Group
> Note.


Perhaps. But it doesn't seem to be note be done by a Rec and I'm not  
clear that your worries about Rec status are so plausible. Indeed, it  
suggests (again) that the non-normative documents absolutely  
shouldn't be rec (the primer is *the* tutorial? the quick reference  
card is *the* QRC?)

Anyway, I'm personally not decided (a bit of Devil's Advocating  
above), but I can see that people might well want it to be a Rec (for  
greater perceived stability, vetting, officialness, etc.) I can, of  
course, see why not (esp. for the effort involved).

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Wednesday, 10 December 2008 17:04:21 UTC