Re: [BLD] comments on the semantics of lists

Sorry, my mistake. I corrected this:
http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/wiki/Core/List_Constructor-alt

Had to introduce 1 more function, like in your semantics, but still this is
much easier to read, I believe.

By the way, I realized that the syntax is not quite OK (for my semantics),
because I do not treat Seq as a function symbol and so there is a
possible confusion. I would prefer something like [[a b c d]] or <<a b c d>>.
This is not a big deal, however, since our presentation syntax is ambiguous
anyway and is used for examples/semantics only.

On the second thought, it is not ambiguous, since our constants all look
like "..."^^iri and Seq does not look like that. Still, something like
[[...] or <<...> seems preferable.

One more thing.
Apart from the simplified semantics, it is preferable to
not treat Seq as a function symbol for other reasons as well. For instance,
if Seq is not a func sym, we will not need to add polyadic exceptions to
the syntax of BLD. Currently BLD has no such exceptions, but if we adopt
your proposed semantics then we would have to add exceptions.

Another reason is that in your proposed XML syntax you do not treat Seq as
a function symbol. So, treating it as a function symbol in the presentation
syntax and the semantics and then not treating Sec as a function in XML is
not very pleasing.


	--michael  


> Jos,
> 
> The current version says that nil is added to the domain,
> but a version of your wording is more precise:
> "the domain D of every RIF structure I contains an object nil".
> Regarding the pair function, the idea is to keep it simple
> in the manner of Lisp's s-expressions, as Michael mentioned
> [the syntax allows Seq(1 2 | 3) as well as Seq(1 2 | Seq(...))]:
> "every RIF structure contains a function pair: D x D -> D".
> 
> Michael,
> 
> Wouldn't you identify
> I(Seq(t1 ... tn t))   = Iseq(I(t1), ..., I(tn), I(t))
> with
> I(Seq(t1 ... tn | t)) = Iseq(I(t1), ..., I(tn), I(t))?
> 
> Thanks to both,
> Harold
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kifer@cs.sunysb.edu [mailto:kifer@cs.sunysb.edu] 
> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 3:33 PM
> To: Jos de Bruijn
> Cc: Boley, Harold; RIF WG
> Subject: Re: [BLD] comments on the semantics of lists 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, the syntactic part of the proposal is fine, but the semantic is
> incomplete and unnecessarily complex. I quickly put together an
> alternative at
> http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/wiki/Core/List_Constructor-alt
> 
> The syntax part is the same there, but the semantics is different
> (simplified and does not have undefined parts).
> 
> 
> 	--michael  
> 
> Jos wrote:
> >
> > Harold,
> > 
> > I had a closer look at your proposal for the semantics of lists in RIF
> 
> > [1].  I have a few comments:
> > 
> > The symbol nil is not defined.  It should probably be something like 
> > "the domain of every RIF structure I contains an object nil".
> > 
> > The function pair is not defined.  It should probably be something
> like 
> > "every RIF structure contains a function pair: D x Dl -> Dl, where Dl
> is 
> > a subset of D comprising the object nil and the range of pair".
> > 
> > Apart from these two things, the proposal looks fine.
> > 
> > Best, Jos
> > 
> > [1] http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/wiki/Core/List_Constructor
> > -- 
> > Jos de Bruijn            debruijn@inf.unibz.it
> > +390471016224         http://www.debruijn.net/
> 
> 
>

Received on Saturday, 9 February 2008 00:13:06 UTC