Re: [BLD] Review (completing ACTION-776)

On Tue, 19 May 2009 11:28:24 +0200
Christian De Sainte Marie <csma@fr.ibm.com> wrote:

> > 
> > > - Section 2.2, 2nd par.: the definition of base term does not seem to 
> > > exclude atoms (plain or external);
> > 
> > Why should it?
> 
> Because it is not unusual that, in logic, "term" refers to constants, 
> variables or the result of acting on terms by functions... And because it 
> is sometimes useful to distinguish between what can be an argument to a 
> predicate or function, and what can not.
> 
> And, so, I thought that "basic term" was introduced for those reasons. 
> Stupid me.

No, basic terms are not for that. It is just a device to break the cyclicity of
the definition and make it well-founded.

> Btw, in PRD, the term "term" is used for constants, variables and 
> functions, paralleling the use of TERM in the description of the EBNF and 
> XML syntax. I removed the note, in PRD's section Atomic formulas, about 
> the correspondence between the terminology used in BLD and PRD.

It is unfortunate that EBNF uses a different terminology.

 
> > > - Section 2.3, par. 2: the definition of an externally defined atomic 
> > > formula does not seems to exclude externally defined frames, equality, 
> > > membership or subclass atomic formulas. [...]
> > 
> > Take a look at the section "Terms," item 9.
> > http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/BLD#Terms
> 
> Yes. I saw that. Isn't there a risk that the confused reader might 
> understand that the definition in section "Formulas" is meant to extend 
> the definition in previous section "Terms"?

I don't see how this might happen. It clearly says that formulas are terms and
not the other way around.

Regarding the annotation ids being the same or different from the Ids of the
frames, I don't see why this restriction is needed. Annotations can be attached
to many things that are not frames. Let the user decide what they need to do
and how to express that.

michael

Received on Tuesday, 19 May 2009 17:37:05 UTC