Re: [UCR] ISSUE-12 and ACTION6198

Dave Reynolds wrote:
> Christian de Sainte Marie wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> ----------------------------------
>> PROPOSED - The RIF WG will define a small number of standard dialects. 
>> Although the design goal of each dialect will be rule interchange, any
>> or all of these dialects may be considered standard semantic web rule 
>> languages.
>> ----------------------------------
> 
> [...]
> 
> However the phrasing permits a reading where the WG might be doing 
> something active to enable these dialects to be used as standard 
> semantic web rule languages. This might accidentally raise expectations. 
> Whereas my sense from the F2F3 discussion is this is unlikely and it 
> would be better to say so.
> 
> The best alternative I've come up with so for is:
> 
> [[[
> PROPOSED - The RIF WG will define a small number of standard dialects.
> Although the design goal of each dialect will be rule interchange, each 
> may be considered a rule language. Since RIF will support rules which 
> can process RDF as data and will be compatible with OWL then any or all 
> of these dialects could form the basis of some future standard semantic 
> web rule languages. However, the RIF WG is not committed to developing 
> any such proposals nor laying any particular foundations for them beyond 
> the compatibility requirements mandated by the charter.
> ]]]

I have no objection against that proposal. This is what I meant, more or 
less. Except that I would like to amend text to:
----------------------------------------
PROPOSED - The RIF WG will define a small number of standard dialects.
Although each dialect may be considered a rule language, it will be 
designed for the sole purpose of rule interchange. Since RIF will 
support rules that can process RDF as data and will be compatible with 
OWL then any or all of these dialects could form the basis of some 
future standard semantic web rule languages. However, the RIF WG is not 
committed to developing any such proposals nor laying any particular 
foundations for them beyond the compatibility requirements mandated by 
the charter.
----------------------------------------

Indeed, my only objection to Dave's proposal would be to a sentence that 
is in my own proposal too (and I dislike it in my proposal too): 
"although the design goal of each dialect will be rule interchange, each 
may be considered a rule language".

I propose to rephrase it the other way round making it: "although each 
dialect may be considered a rule language, it will be designed for the 
sole purpose of rule interchange"; you know that I think that we should 
be more careful to avoid the confusion between different kind of rule 
language, and that a rule language for the purpose of rule interchange 
might not satisfy the requirements of a rule language for the purpose of 
automated reasoning.

> Given the F2F3 discussion I thought it more honest to replace "not 
> committed to" by "will not" but that got a negative reaction too, hence 
> the above.

Yes. My initial proposal was much stronger too. Discussions led me to 
water it down to make it more widely acceptable, too :-)

Christian

Received on Tuesday, 9 January 2007 11:48:53 UTC