Re: draft responses for four JC LC comments

On 13 May 2009, at 15:23, Michael Schneider wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bijan Parsia [mailto:bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk]
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 3:57 PM
>> To: Michael Schneider
>> Cc: public-owl-wg@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: draft responses for four JC LC comments
>>
>> On 13 May 2009, at 14:16, Michael Schneider wrote:
>> [snip]
>>>> On 13 May 2009, at 12:32, Michael Schneider wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>>> * Reification Comment: I'm happy with this draft. And I agree that
>>>>> a lot more could be said. If this should become necessary, I will
>>>>> be happy to volunteer to say more on this. The WG may take me as a
>>>>> champion for *not* (re|ab)using RDF reification as OWL's  
>>>>> annotation
>>>>> vocabulary.
>>>>
>>>> I don't care one way or the other. This is a bone I'd be  
>>>> prepared to
>>>> throw them.
>>>>
>>>> Michael, as the champion, would it bug you terribly to give in on
>>>> this point?
>>>
>>> Yes, really! And I also do not see any need for action.
>>>
>>> Before this comment of TQ, I remember only two typical stances of
>>> parties:
>>> Either people did not care about this topic at all, or they were
>>> (emotionally at least) strongly against using RDF Reification.
>>
>> That's not correct. I recall, for example, at the F2F where you raise
>> this, Ian, for example, being very frustrated that we could not use
>> the built-in vocabulary as it was apparently intended.
>
> I did not remember this. Sorry!

No worries.

> Concerning the bone: They already got it, in the form of a changed RDF
> encoding of sub property chains.

True, but I don't mind throwing a few more if they aren't seriously  
problematic.

> At least, I did not hear any snarling from
> this direction.
>
> But if we really want to change something,

Well, "really" is a bit strong. I would like it, all things  
considered, if we could throw them a bone this round. If the bone  
doesn't bug anyone, it seems a win.

> then let's again look at their
> main argument:
>
> [[
> The apparent motivation is because RDF reification is
> seen as semantically problematic. These issues are not
> addressed by using the same vocabulary in a different
> namespace.
> ]]

I'm not sure if parsing their actual "arguments" is productive. My  
position would be that if giving them this is sufficiently harmless  
that there is some benefit to giving it to them.

> Whatever these "semantically problematic" aspects are, I think it's  
> clear
> that there is no way around a multi-triple encoding of axiom  
> annotations in
> general. We have already answered this to them in the past, and we  
> at least
> did not get a negative reply on this. So, what remains is the "same
> vocabulary in a different namespace" "issue". This can be changed,  
> here's a
> proposal:
>
>   owl:annotationSource
>   owl:annotationProperty
>   owl:annotationTarget
>
> This takes a bit of its nameing from the NPA vocabulary -- hope  
> that this
> will not be considered problematic, again...

That ignores their other "rationale" which was additional vocabulary.  
But maybe that would make them happier.

> For us, this change is trivial, since it's just Find&Replace on all  
> our
> documents. Note that with the RDF Reification vocabulary, we would  
> probably
> need to say something about why we are (re)using this, and why we  
> do /not/
> apply the "intended" semantics of Reification (as stated as a "MAY"  
> in the
> RDF Semantics) in our documents, in particular not in OWL 2 DL, where
> annotations are considered semantic-free. I would really like to  
> avoid such
> discussion.

Is that really so difficult? How about something like, "We use the  
reification vocabulary without the "intended" semantics, but just as  
a bare vocabulary entirely characterized by the semantics documents."  
As long as no one *else* objects (and thus far, no one has, so we  
have only speculative objections at the moment), then it's fine.

> But, after all, I do not see that we really are required to throw with
> bones. We had this topic on our agenda, and we made a decision.  
> Maybe on
> could go either way, but that's even more reason to /not/ change  
> anything.

That can't be right. If we could go either way, and someone strongly  
prefers (unto the point of objection) that we go one way, then we  
have a strong reason to go their way. Indeed, we are more or less  
required to by process. Now they didn't say they'd object on this, so  
perhaps it's moot. But they cared enough to make an LC comment. One  
less not-accepted LC response seems good.

Of course, it's very annoying to have to deal with this not great  
behavior, and esp. to yield to dubious at best arguments. But oh well.

I guess I won't press any further. But it does seem to be an easy one  
to give way on, if you can bring yourself to agree.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Wednesday, 13 May 2009 14:57:58 UTC