Re: meaning of rif:External (was Re: Diatribe on why rif:iri consts should be left alone)

On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:00:41 -0400
Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:

> > Sandro, it is a semantic issue, not architectural. An alternative to External
> > would be rif:special, as I proposed in the message that prompted this thread
> > (Diatribe...). But without a device like this there is no way to maintain
> > extensibility of the semantics.
> I don't know how to begin to understand the semantics when the
> architecture doesn't make sense, eg having two IRI symbol spaces with
> different semantics.   My mind just stops there.

This is for an IRI Religion study group. :-)
Has little to do with logical languages.

> Practically speaking, if you and Jos can come to consensus on this, I
> can probably pass on understanding the details. If you can't (and soon),
> then I think you guys will need to explain it to the rest of us (or at
> least me) in terms we can understand (eg test cases).

I think we have a consensus. There are differences in the weights that we
assign to different undesirable implications, and this is what prevents us from
implementing that consensus.


	--michael  


> > On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:21:49 -0400
> > Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > > Dave Reynolds wrote:
> > > > > Surely the extensibility argument could equally well be applied to the
> > > > > predicates and functions in DTB. Those are denoted by rif:iris and we
> > > > > are giving them a fixed interpretation, at least as externals.
> > > > 
> > > > It is precisely because of the extensibility issue that we require
> > > > External() to be written around external predicates and functions. If
> > > > the name, say, func:string-join is used outside External(), it is simply
> > > > an uninterpreted symbol, and DTB has nothing to say about it.
> > > 
> > > This makes me suspect we have some different ideas about how the
> > > Semantic Web is supposed to work.  Let me try to state my understanding,
> > > and then return to External().  I don't actually understand how this
> > > relates to ISSUE-93, so I don't talk about that here.
> > > 
> > > I think the key architectural point about IRIs is that whenever you use
> > > one, you are automatically (to some extent) subscribing to some external
> > > semantics.  They might not be written down yet, or they might be written
> > > only in natural language.  They might even change, possibly in
> > > uncontrolled, hostile ways.  When you chose to use an IRI, you have to
> > > chose carefully.  Generally you either pick one in your own namespace or
> > > you pick one in the namespace of an organization you trust to maintain
> > > both the web content and the community usage (eg W3C).
> > > 
> > > The analogy to the HTML web holds here; when you make a link out of a
> > > web page you care about, you have to think carefully about where you are
> > > linking to.  What happens to your reputation, your services, and your
> > > users if that site suddenly turns into something offensive or dangerous
> > > (eg a phishing site)? 
> > > 
> > > It's also not a good plan to have one IRI refer to two different things,
> > > such that you can only tell which it refers to by context.  In what you
> > > say above, what happens if someone provides documentation in metadata
> > > about a predicate that is used in both an external and a non-external
> > > context?  Which predicate does the documentaiton describe?  In my mind,
> > > it's still about both, because they're actually the same thing.  I don't
> > > see External as changing what the IRI denotes, but as signalling the
> > > consumer that it should know how to reduce the enclosed expression to a
> > > Const (for terms) or true/false (for formulas).
> > > 
> > > I suspect that's not actually the meaning given to External in BLD in
> > > the LC1 draft, but in the press to get to LC, I figured we had about the
> > > same idea about how External worked and we could hammer out technical
> > > differences later when we started having test cases, implementations,
> > > etc.   
> > > 
> > > With the insight of this conversation in mind, I suggest we rename
> > > External to Evaluated.  It's not clear to me that it should appear in
> > > the model theoretic semantics; it seems more like a pragmatic check for
> > > consumers, allowing them to reason more effectively and give appropriate
> > > errors when they need to.
> > > 
> > > On Michael's point about Extensibility in [1], it's not the dialects
> > > that give meaning to IRIs, it's the IRI's owner (in some sort of
> > > collaboration with the rest of the world).  So any given predicate IRI
> > > or function IRI conceptually means the same thing in every RIF
> > > document, it's just that in some dialects we can assume consumers know
> > > that meaning and in others we can't.  Arbitrary use of the IRI doesn't
> > > signal an assumption that its meaning is known, but use inside
> > > External/Evaluated does.
> > > 
> > >     -- Sandro
> > > 
> > > [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2009Apr/0029.html
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> >     -- michael
> 
> 


-- 
    -- michael

Received on Friday, 10 April 2009 18:06:47 UTC