Re: Rich Annotations

From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Rich Annotations
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:40:06 +0000

> On Nov 25, 2007, at 3:09 PM, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> 
> > From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
> > Subject: Re: Rich Annotations
> > Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:48:08 +0000
> >
> >> On Nov 25, 2007, at 1:04 PM, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> >>
> >>> From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
> >>> Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 11:52:40 +0000
> [snip]
> >> This makes it conforming and specifies a processing model. I don't
> >> see how you can appeal to the bad of sanctioning non-conformingness
> >> if the proposal makes it conforming. You may not want such uses to
> >> conform, but that's different.
> >
> > What processing model?  Does your proposal provide a way of  
> > determining
> > when a tool does the right thing for (i.e., understand) these  
> > annotated
> > constructs?
> 
> One checks with the associated spec.

Where?  Who determines?  How specified?

> >   If not, then how can one determine conformance?
> 
> By checking with the associated spec.

> > I could
> > cliam that my tool understands all annotations; how could you  
> > refute my
> > claim?
> 
> By pointing to the associated spec.

Suppose I claim that you are pointing to the wrong thing?  

> It isn't magic, just a hook. This is no different than the current  
> situation *except* I have a way of indicating to arbitrary tools that  
> I've included an extension. That's all this is doing.

Yes, this may be *all*, but it seems to me to be a very big all.

> > [...]
> >
> >>>> Yeah. Your tactics don't actually reduce the number of extensions,
> >>>> because people will and do extend. And they *will* use paths of  
> >>>> less
> >>>> resistance. Thus, I'd rather make those paths somewhat more robust.
> >>>
> >>> I view having a syntax extension as more robust.  I view a
> >>> modification
> >>> of the meaning of existing syntax as the least robust kind of
> >>> change to
> >>> a specification, no matter how it is signalled.
> >>
> >> The syntax would be e.g., "SubClassOf with a mustUnderstand
> >> annotation". I'm proposing that this be a kind of syntactic  
> >> extension.
> >
> > OK.  I suppose that one could think of the status of annotation spaces
> > as a modifier on the syntax of existing OWL syntactic constructs.
> > However, I don't view this as a desirable syntax extension mechanism.
> 
> Fine.
> 
> > In any case, I would count it as a major change to OWL.
> 
> Why? It's a small change to any tool (detect mustUnderstand, punt if  
> tool isn't aware of the extension). This is exactly the current  
> status except one is not required to punt.

As I said before, perhaps not a major change to implementations (but I'm
not convinced on the point), but a major change in philosophy.

> [snip]
> >> I think you have a preference for things called "annotations" to be
> >> "semantically meaningless". I just view them as a syntactic category.
> >> People will write tools that are sensitive to that syntactic
> >> category. Some of these might involve overriding (in a *variety* of
> >> ways) the default interpretation of other bits of syntax. When that
> >> happens, I'd like to mark it.
> >
> > I, on the other hand, would like to make it very clear in the
> > recommendation that these sorts of uses of annotations are not
> > conformant to the specification.
> 
> And that is a departure from OWL as she are practiced. Which, I would  
> argue, is a bigger departure.

Nope.  That is just the way things are right now.

> > [...]
> >
> >> Right but I can at least see which subClass axioms are disjointess
> >> axioms, etc. Again, if my extension is radically non local, that will
> >> be of limited use, but you are just pointing out a limitation. Yeah,
> >> it has limits. So? Constraints, non-mon inheritence, probabilities,
> >> axiom schemas, etc. all seem to work fairly reasonably.
> >
> > It would be useful to have some examples of how these sorts of things
> > would work.
> 
> I listed examples. If you would like more detail, feel free to ask on  
> any of them. Pronto is described in a series of blog posts.

Yes please, I need pointers and details.

[...]

> Cheers,
> Bijan.


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Monday, 26 November 2007 09:29:29 UTC