Focusing RIF work in task forces

At today's telecon we discussed the possibility of creating dedicated 
task forces within RIF to help better focus the existing work and move 
it forward, and to help clarify some of the fundamental issues that 
have been slowing our progress.

In particular, we would like to form two task forces

1) Horn TF: would be responsible for finishing the current spec and 
changing its name from "RIF Core" to "RIF Horn Dialect" or something 
similar.

2) PR TF: would be responsible for defining a production rule dialect 
based as much as possible on what has already been done in the horn 
dialect (the abstract syntax and any semantics that makes sense).

Focusing these task forces in this way would address several issues, 
most importantly the issue that defining a common core does not seem 
possible without a well defined definition of what it will be the core 
for.  Thus, when these two task forces finish, we should have enough 
information to meaningfully address the "how core is core" type of 
questions by identifying the intersection of the two dialects.

The other key aspect of this proposal is renaming the existing 
specification the "Horn Dialect" instead of the "Core".  I believe 
once we consider it in that light, it will be easier to finish the spec.

We would like to pass some resolutions on this at the next telecon, if 
you have any opinions on them please feel free to express them to the 
list.

The resolutions will be, roughly:

PROPOSED: Create two task forces in RIF, one for PR and one for Horn.
PROPOSED: Rename the RIF Core "RIF Horn Dialect"
PROPOSED: Create a "RIF PR Dialect"

-Chris

-- 
Dr. Christopher A. Welty                    IBM Watson Research Center
+1.914.784.7055                             19 Skyline Dr.
cawelty@gmail.com                           Hawthorne, NY 10532
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty

Received on Tuesday, 10 July 2007 17:54:57 UTC