- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>
- Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:48:11 +0200
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>, Pierre-Antoine Champin <pierre-antoine.champin@liris.cnrs.fr>, RDF Working Group WG <public-rdf-wg@w3.org>
On 18 April 2011 15:29, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote: > > On Apr 17, 2011, at 11:19 PM, Ivan Herman wrote: > >> >> On Apr 17, 2011, at 16:49 , Pat Hayes wrote: >> >> <snip/> >>> >>>> >>>> My very sketchy feeling that if we define a good old class, say, G-box, we can then: >>>> >>>> - say that <g> rdf:type G-box which is the identification of a g-box >>> >>> This by itself would not attach the name to a particular g-box, however. >> >> Correct. Some hand-waving may be necessary when we define g-*. But I am not sure that a very precise mathematical apparatus is necessary in practice. > > I am sure you are right. Precise mathematics has rarely been of practical use. How many bridges, for example, are held up by mathematics? String and duct tape seems to suffice for most practical purposes. Well, quite. W3C saw fit to bless RDF's original Model & Syntax spec as a Recommendation, before any working group had really thought through what the identity conditions for members of the class rdf:Statement were. That was a mistake. Inventing a name and URI for some alleged 'class' gives a false impression of precision. If you don't have some recipe for working out when two descriptions of such a class member refer to the same thing, ... often the class isn't as useful as it seems. The old rdf:Statement situation being quite classic case of that. Let's not do that again with 'Graph'. cheers, Dan
Received on Monday, 18 April 2011 13:48:42 UTC