Re: RDF Semantics - Intuitive summary needs to be scoped to interpretations (ISSUE-149)

Greetings David:

This is an official RDF working group response to your message
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Oct/0010.html
on Section 5.2, Intuitive Summary, of the RDF 1.1 Semantics document.
The Working Group thanks you for your concerns on this aspect of the RDF
recommendations, which have been tracked as ISSUE-149.

Section 5.2 is an informative section and was only put in as an short,
easier-to-understand gloss of some of the the preceeding more-formal
section.  Both your comment and the ensuing discussion have made it clear
that the section is not achieving its purpose.  As there appears to be no
consensus on what changes, if any, should be made to the section, it is the
intent of the working group to just remove the entire section.

Could you please respond to public-rdf-comments@w3.org as to whether
removing this non-normative, non-formal section would satisfactorily address
your concern?  If you are satisfied, then the section will be removed from
the document.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
for the W3C RDF WG


On 10/01/2013 10:15 PM, David Booth wrote:
> https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-mt/index.html
>
> Section 5.2 Intuitive summary needs to be scoped to a particular 
> interpretation or set of interpretations.  At present the interpretations 
> are implicit, and this is misleading because it suggests that the notion of 
> a graph being true is somehow independent of an interpretation, whereas in 
> fact the truth of a graph critically depends on the interpretations that are 
> chosen.
>
> I suggest rewording the first sentence of this section from: "An RDF graph 
> is true exactly when: . . . " to: "An RDF graph is true exactly when there 
> exists an interpretation such
> that: . . . "
>
> Also, the verb "interpret" is being used in this clause: "2. there is some 
> way to interpret all the blank nodes in the graph as referring to things,", 
> but that causes confusion with the notion of an interpretation (which is a 
> function).  It would be better to use a different verb at this point.
>
> Also point 4 mentions "these interpretations", but it isn't clear what 
> interpretations are meant.  Perhaps it means the results of the verb 
> "interpret" in item 2?  In which case, a different word should be used here 
> also.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 9 October 2013 22:06:49 UTC