- From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.rpi.edu>
- Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 09:02:50 -0400
- To: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Cc: public-owl-wg@w3.org
snipping just to the key parts... On Nov 2, 2007, at 8:28 AM, Bijan Parsia wrote: > > I know you don't like the structural specification, but I don't > like either splitting it out or making the descriptive spec too > elaborate. As we disagree, I hope reasonably, there is some work to > be done to get consensus. actually, the problem I have with the structural spec is precisely that it doesn't have a descriptive section (or sections). I'm not at all opposed in principle to the idea that we could combine these - however, i do think we need to be sure that the OWL 1.0 reference and his correctly point at each other -- because otherwise we'll have a lot of duplication or, worse, ambiguity -- note that if you google for "OWL ontology" (the best way I have found to see the OWL Rec docs in Google) ref comes up hit 1 (if you just google for "owl" the only doc that comes up in the first couple pages is the overview) - implying that people are indeed linking to it (can't prove anyone reads it, but anecdotally I know that more people I talk to are familiar with Ref than with the others) > >> and the "user guide" -- I don't see where we have any choice on that. > > Similarly, we've not done *any* work to determine what the WG as a > whole would think is an acceptable and useful user guide. Some > people have expressed a desire for diff or near diff documents. > I've expressed some qualms at that. > > Both you and Jeremy (he in telecon) have tried to make the my > disagreement to be a matter of my ignoring the charter. Please stop > that. My current questions are about timing (I *don't* think it's > necessary or helpful to produce a *comprehensive* descriptive spec > before the design is done) and the form. I think some of us want to coevolve the technical docs and the overview so that people trying to judge what the WG is doing can have an easier entree - but don't portray me as saying we need these same time or before the first WDs - I've not advocated that - I didn't object to the first three things being published being the formal docs and the RDF mapping, what I had problems with is doing it before the WG had really met, discussed and reviewed (or even worked out what the name will be) > > In fact, I've not heard a coherent description of the particular > form of the documents, or the users they are targeting. For > example, descriptive material targeting web developers, vs. > targeting triplestore authors, vs. targeting HCLS modelers can look > very different. Documents targeting one might be rather less > successful or even fail with others. > I don't think we have any obligation to do that anymore than you have to say exactly who you are targeting with OWL 1.1 docs. The way I understand the WG process is we represent who we believe we represent, and we argue from that perspective - there's no obligation for more than that. I can help write and/or review docs from that perspective, as can the rest of the WG - in fact, that's the obligation of WG members. i.e. the Oracle rep is responsible only for whether he/she thinks it meets Oracle's need, the HP rep for HP, etc. etc. -- (I know you know this, I'm just reminding some of the newer folks to the WG that they represent sectors as they see fit) > Furthermore, Jeremy apparently is proposing producing Working > Drafts that aren't rec track, or submission track, but /dev/null/ > track (i.e., deliberately designed to be dropped after one or two > versions). I'm not sure how I feel about that on several levels. I don't know how I feel about it either - esp. as we do eventually have charter deliverables meaning that something has to be rec track. anyway, I think from this you see we're closer than we thought, so that's probably good news > > Cheers, > Bijan. > "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?." - Albert Einstein Prof James Hendler http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler Tetherless World Constellation Chair Computer Science Dept Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180
Received on Friday, 2 November 2007 13:03:04 UTC