- From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:07:19 +0000
- To: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Cc: Uli Sattler <sattler@cs.man.ac.uk>, Owl Dev <public-owl-dev@w3.org>, OWL 2 <public-owl-wg@w3.org>
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 17:04:20 UTC