Re: B-scopes

Hi Antoine,

To be honest, I think your proposal makes the problem worse by deepening the disconnect between abstract syntax and semantics. See, the problem is this. Let's assume we have two Turtle files:

  _:x :name "Alice".

And another one:

  _:x :name "Bob".

They use the same token _:x. But we know that according to the semantics, they don't necessarily label the same thing; both files can be true even if there's nothing in the universe that has both of the names "Alice" and "Bob".

So the Turtle syntax uses the same token to indicate two possibly different things. How do you explain that?

The 2004 account handwaves around the issue by saying that _:x is just a local label, and leaving the question open  whether they label the same or different things in the abstract syntax. So these two files may or may not serialize the same blank node. Then the semantics explains that even if it's the same blank node, if it comes from different places then we need to do a merge, and that creates different blank nodes.

Your account says that the two _:x actually are global labels, and therefore *do* label the same blank node in the abstract syntax, saying that the two files actually share a blank node. Then you handwave around the issue one level further down by saying that the graphs came from different sources and therefore a merge is required and that would create different blank nodes.

My proposed account [1] says that the two _:x are local labels, and label different blank nodes, because they are in different files, and hence different scopes. No handwaving required!

You *cannot* produce a coherent account of the simple two-file situation shown above without talking about scopes or sources *somewhere*. Currently, that talk is hidden away in Semantics where most people won't see it (last paragraph of [2]). I want us to get that talk out of the way right there in Concepts where blank nodes are defined.

> (id,scope) is just a complicated way of defining a globally unique identifier for a bnode.

That is nonsense. It's an explicit way of saying that id is not globally unique.

Best,
Richard


[1] http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/User:Rcygania2/B-Scopes#Specification_Changes
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/#unlabel



On 17 Nov 2012, at 10:27, Antoine Zimmermann wrote:

> I don't find this really useful, and even confusing. Like Andy, I see this as an implementation approach.
> 
> (id,scope) is just a complicated way of defining a globally unique identifier for a bnode.
> 
> What I would say instead is the following:
> 
> """
> Bnodes are drawn from an infinite set. Each bnode has a label being a UNICODE string, different from all other bnode labels. So when one draws a bnode, one can tell which bnode it is.
> Serialisation syntaxes that rely on bnode identifiers are in fact identifying the exact bnode they use.
> """
> 
> And everything stays the same. No other changes are required.
> 
> It especially clarifies what this sentence means:
> 
> """
> Given two blank nodes, it is possible to determine whether or not they are the same.
> """
> 
> In RDF 2004, this sentence was never really implemented anywhere. If you got a bunch of triples, then another bunch of triples, you could not say which bnode of the first bunch were the same or different as the bnodes of the second bunch.
> 
> There are cases when you want to split a graph into subgraphs, in which case you must know what bnodes actually appear in each subgraph. To get back the full graph from the subgraphs, it is required that you use set union, not merge. This requires that the bnodes are all identified in the same way across the subgraphs.
> 
> Notice that a bnode label does not denote anything in terms of the formal semantics, so it has nothing to do with an IRI, and nothing to do with a skolem IRI. The label is only there to tell which bnode is used. It's an existential variable name and it can be replaced by any other variable name without changing the meaning of a graph.
> 
> Fresh bnode may be defined formally as follows:
> 
> """
> Given a set of RDF graphs Sg, the triples of which containing a set Sb of bnodes, a fresh bnode with respect to Sg is a bnode b not in Sb.
> """
> 
> Of course, when we say "new", it has to be new wrt something predefined, thus the notion of "fresh bnode with respect to a set of RDF graphs".
> 
> 
> --AZ
> 
> 
> 
> Le 14/11/2012 12:02, Richard Cyganiak a écrit :
>> Following recent discussions, I've written up a proposal to change
>> the design of blank nodes in RDF by explicitly introducing scoped
>> blank node identifiers into the abstract syntax.
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/User:Rcygania2/B-Scopes
>> 
>> Requirements:
>> 
>> • Consistency with all resolutions the WG has made so far • No
>> changes to other specs beyond Concepts and Semantics required • No
>> changes to conforming implementations required
>> 
>> All further details are in the wiki.
>> 
>> Comments welcome.
>> 
>> Best, Richard
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Antoine Zimmermann
> ISCOD / LSTI - Institut Henri Fayol
> École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne
> 158 cours Fauriel
> 42023 Saint-Étienne Cedex 2
> France
> Tél:+33(0)4 77 42 66 03
> Fax:+33(0)4 77 42 66 66
> http://zimmer.aprilfoolsreview.com/
>

Received on Saturday, 17 November 2012 16:02:04 UTC