Re: Editorial changes in Section 2.5

>On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 20:10 +0100, Enrico Franconi wrote:
>>  On 13 Feb 2006, at 15:22, Dan Connolly wrote:
>>  >> That text (in the definition) was something that the WG made a 
>>  >> decision about.
>>  >>   I don't think I have license to make changes without further a 
>>  >> WG decision
>>  >> (and you weren't there on Tuesday).
>>  >>
>>  >> Dan - can I apply the changes?
>>  >> Or apply them for WG review?
>>  >
>>  > It's been very difficult to get all the interested parties on this
>>  > issue in sync. I'm not inclined to re-consider our 26 Jan decision
>>  > without a really compelling argument that it's broken.
>>  >
>  > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2006JanMar/
>>  > att-0298/26-dawg-minutes.html#item04
>>  >
>>  > If this is only an editorial problem, it can get fixed during CR.
>>  >
>>  > A test case showing it's a substantive problem would be a compelling
>>  > argument to re-consider the decision.
>>  >
>>  > Andy, I'd rather you did _not_ change the decisions that we
>>  > agreed on 26 Jan.
>>  >
>>  > Enrico, I hope you find this acceptable.
>>
>>  Not really.
>>  These are editorial problems, that make the current definition
>>
>>  (a) slightly imprecise from the formal point of view:
>>
>>  >>>> 1) missing explicit quantification (some term has not been properly
>>  >>>> introduced before being mentioned: B and BGP')
>>  >>>>
>>  >>>> 2) the notion of "introduced by" should be replaced by the more
>>  >>>> precise "in the range of"
>>
>>  (b) not fully understandable:
>>
>>  >>>> 3) we need to emphasise that G' and B are somehow fixed - so that
>>  >>>> we can ignore mentioning them from now on (as we actually do
>>  >>>> whenever we mention matching in the rest of the document).
>>
>>  I don't see why we want to go public with an imprecise document, 
>>  while we have spotted the imprecision in advance.
>>  Why should we be so rigid for an editorial problem?
>
>Because I need to be sure that the text is agreed by the WG.
>
>I am not certain that the change you're suggesting is not substantively
>different from what the WG decided on 26 Jan.

FWIW, it seems to me that the text as it 
currently is (version 1.638) does the job 
required reasonably adequately. It defines B and 
G' before using them in the main definition, as 
required, and it says "The same scoping set and 
scoping graph is used for all basic graph pattern 
matching in a single SPARQL query request." 
Maybe "is used" could be edited to "must be used" 
but I don't really think this is necessary.

As for not mentioning them in the rest of the 
document, the reason why B is not mentioned is 
given at the start of section 2.5.2:
"This document defines SPARQL for simple 
entailment and the scoping set B is the set of 
all RDF terms in G'."

I don't like the other suggested change, as it 
adds nothing but is potentially misleading (can 
be easily misunderstood) so the current text is 
better.

I would however like to delete the final comment in section 2.5.1 , viz.

"The introduction of the basic graph pattern BGP' 
in the above definition makes the query basic 
graph pattern independent of the choice of blank 
node names in the basic graph pattern."

on the grounds (1) that it is false and (2) that 
it reflects a failure to grasp the basic 
principles of blank node scoping in RDF by 
referring to blank node names, which are 
determined by the scoping rules for documents, 
not by the graphs themselves (see 
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/#graphsyntax , second 
paragraph). But as my opposition is already noted 
in the record, I make this remark here only in 
case the earlier decision is re-visited.

Pat

>
>If you can get 2 or 3 WG members (e.g. Bijan/Kendall/UMD and Pat H)
>to look closely and positively confirm that it's only an editorial
>change, then I'll revise my advice to the editor.
>
>Perhaps we can do this quickly in tomorrow's teleconference.
>But I'm not inclined to give it more than 5 minutes, and if
>it doesn't work out, I want to leave our 26 Jan decision in tact.
>
>
>
>>  cheers
>>  --e.
>--
>Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
>D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E


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Received on Monday, 13 February 2006 23:54:27 UTC