Re: Proposal to resolve ISSUE-102 (well-formed lists)

Hi Pat,

On 12 Nov 2012, at 10:20, Pat Hayes wrote:
> OK, after reading the email trail and thinking harder about this, some more comments.
> 
> 1. RDF only describes lists, it does not construct or process them. So there is no such thing as a "well-formed RDF list". What there might be is something like a well-formed RDF *description* of a list, but that raises a number of issues.

I think that RDF does not merely describe lists, but it expresses them, in the same way that it expresses triples and graphs.

> 2. What counts as a well-formed RDF description of a list? If this means the list which is described by the description is "well-formed" (which I take to mean, it is a LISP S-expression), then almost any description is well-formed. For example:
> 
> _:x rdf:first :a
> _:x rdf:first :b
> 
> is true if :a owl:sameAs :b and _:x is the list (a), or indeed the list (a fred somethingelse); any list with a as its first element will do. 

The constraint that I have in mind is a constraint of the abstract syntax, not a constraint of the semantics.

To be precise: A well-formed list is either the node rdf:nil, or a blank node with exactly one incoming arc and exactly two outgoing arcs, one of which is rdf:first, and the other is rdf:rest pointing to another well-formed list.

So, the two triples you give would not be a well-formed list.

If :a sameAs :b, then the well-formed list (:a :fred :somethingelse) entails the well-formed list (:b :fred :somethingelse), as well as various non-well-formed lists, one of which you showed in your example.

> 3. If the idea is to require that RDF graphs must give complete information about lists, so that every rdf:next assertion is given all the way to rdf:nil, then this would break the basic entailment between graphs and subgraphs, so a strong -1 on that idea. In general, RDF is designed to allow partial information and to be open-world in its treatment of data, and this kind of a completeness assumption violates that basic design.

The idea is *not* that RDF graphs must give complete information about lists. The idea is that RDF graphs *SHOULD* give complete information about lists.

It doesn't break entailment between graphs and subgraphs; these entailments still hold in the case of well-formed lists, but they are highlighted as entailments that are not particularly useful, and therefore implementers of inference engines are discouraged from producing these entailments. That's what the SHOULD means.

Allowing partial information and being open-world are great, of course. But there are cases where retaining only partial information means that all you have left is a useless carcass of triples. Certainly the reason why we have the open-world assumption is not in order to allow inference engines to rip apart well-formed lists. I don't quite understand the motivation in defending their right to do so.

> 4. If the idea is to encourage RDF authors to use the RDF list vocabulary in a certain obvious way, then make it part of a non-normative best practice guide. The current specs already say this, however, and even say that systems may require adherence to this and treat "ill-formed" descriptions as an error. So I don't see that any major change is needed.

The most relevant spec here is RDF Schema (as it defines the vocabulary in question), and it doesn't say anything to that effect. Neither does the Primer, which has the generally best description of the list construct in the current document set.

Yes, Semantics says useful things about lists, but it strikes me as the wrong place for this content, given that it imposes no semantic conditions whatsoever. It should just state that fact and move on. (Same for several other constructs that don't have any formal semantics associated.)

Best,
Richard



> 
> Pat
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 9, 2012, at 2:48 AM, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> 
>> ISSUE-102: Shall we highlight Turtle's list structures as "Well-Formed Lists" in one of our Recs?
>> http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/102
>> 
>> 
>> PROPOSAL: Define the concept “well-formed list” in detail in RDF Schema, including a nice diagram. State that any use of terms from the collections vocabulary SHOULD be part of a well-formed list. Update Semantics to remove discussion of collections in 3.3.3. Update Turtle and RDF/XML to refer to well-formed lists when introducing the respective syntax shorthands. Send an email to OWL WG comments list informing them of this and suggest that future versions of OWL do the same.
>> 
> 
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Received on Monday, 12 November 2012 17:06:24 UTC