- From: Enrico Franconi <franconi@inf.unibz.it>
- Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 11:30:06 +0100
- To: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
- Cc: Uli Sattler <Ulrike.Sattler@manchester.ac.uk>, public-rif-wg@w3.org
On 9 Dec 2005, at 03:12, Jim Hendler wrote: > At 23:49 +0100 12/8/05, Enrico Franconi wrote: >> The behaviour of a reasoner has to be constrained by the semantics >> of the language it processes, otherwise its behoaviour will be >> just arbitrary: that's why we have semantics :-) > > well, that's true - but let's not forget there are a number of > different kinds of semantics - I don't know of any programming > language in major use that has anything other than operational > semantics, and they seem to work pretty good (at least this email > seems to be getting to you through a whole bunch of computers and > routers and programs, and I suspect few if any have a model theory) -- > this is not to advocate not doing a formal semantics, but just to > remind people that an option is to do basically an operational > semantics for the RIF in phase 1, and then nail down the details in > phase 2 (While people are starting to implement the relatively > stable stuff) -- this might be a way to get a lot more out the door > sooner -- I wish I had considered that option when I was chairing > the WebOnt group - I suspect we'd of gotten to CR sooner if we'd > been able to move things this way (i.e. if we'd had the reference > manual in LC or close thereto while we were finalizing the details > of the semantics) A may agree that this is a viable way to go for the group: first understanding and agreeing on the different behaviours we may find relevant, and then studying and standardising the different semantics for each of them. I am not sure that phase one may end without any semantics though: I think we have to have at least an understanding of the different semantics options *before* fixing the final deliverable of phase one; otherwise we may have taken some non well informed decision which may be painful to fix afterwards. cheers --e.
Received on Friday, 9 December 2005 10:33:44 UTC