Re: ISSUE-52 (Explanations): Specification of OWL equivalences and rewriting rules for explaining inferences

Hi,

The follow-up discussion on ISSUE-52 made Vipul's intentions more  
clear. At first I assumed the proposal was to create a document which  
would exhaustively explain all rewrite rules, hence my distinction  
between accessible specs and educational material. I will reply to  
Alan's message [1] in a separate email.

I agree with the analysis of Bijan and Peter concerning the  
appropriateness of standardising inference explanation in this WG.  
Explanation is, in my view, related to the way in which reasoners  
communicate to clients (UI's) about their internal state, e.g. using  
the proposed DIG 2.0 [2] interface. In fact, the University of Dresden  
has written a proposal for an explanation interface as an extension to  
DIG 2.0 [3]. The DIG 2.0 proposal does not play a role in the charter  
for this WG. And I think inference explanation should not either,  
despite its importance and usefulness.

Best,

	Rinke


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-wg/2007Nov/0042.html
[2] http://dig.cs.manchester.ac.uk/
[3] http://lat.inf.tu-dresden.de/~meng/dig-nsi-explanation.html


On 5 nov 2007, at 09:31, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:

>
> From: "Kashyap, Vipul" <VKASHYAP1@PARTNERS.ORG>
> Subject: RE: ISSUE-52 (Explanations): Specification of OWL  
> equivalences and rewriting rules for explaining inferences
> Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 17:22:00 -0400
>
>>> From: Vipul Kashyap
>>>> I was wondering if the OWL 1.1 effort should also look at ways and
>>>> means of standardizing inference explanations, especially to make
>>>> them user understandable.
>
>> From: Bijan Parsia
>>>
>>> IMO, no.
>>
>> Wondering if you think this is a scope or a relevance issue.
>
> I agree with Bijan that the WG should not look at explanations for
> several reasons, including both scope and relevance:
>
> 1/ You haven't demonstrated a need for explanations.  (This is not to
>   say that there is not a need, but that requests for extra
>   functionality should only be considered if there is a demonstrated
>   need.)
>
> 2/ This is a large addition to the work of the WG, and thus is  
> probably
>   out of scope.
>
> 3/ Although there has been work on explanation generation, I do not
>   believe that there is any consensus on how to present them to users.
>
> 4/ Presenting extra information to users is largely a task of UI  
> tools,
>   so its inclusion in a language spec is problematic.
>
> [...]
>
> Peter F. Patel-Schneider

----------------------------------------------
Drs. Rinke Hoekstra

Email: hoekstra@uva.nl   Skype:  rinkehoekstra
Phone: +31-20-5253499    Fax:   +31-20-5253495
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Leibniz Center for Law,         Faculty of Law
University of Amsterdam,           PO Box 1030
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Received on Monday, 5 November 2007 09:18:29 UTC