- From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
- Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 18:04:02 -0400
- To: Frank van Harmelen <Frank.van.Harmelen@cs.vu.nl>, public-swbp-wg@w3.org
At 23:39 +0200 4/5/04, Frank van Harmelen wrote: > >- Of course, syntax is also a matter of taste, and indeed, N3 is >already a whole lot better than RDF/XML, but we might as well use >parts of the W3C spec's rather than non-spec notations. I find it >strange that Jim argues against the Abstract Syntax on the grounds >that it isn't part of the OWL specs (while it is, see [2]), and then >argues in favour of N3, which has no formal status whatsoever. Frank - this was indeed an error on my part -- typing too fast -- I was trying to say that not all the specs included it (RDF and RDF S dont) nor do all the Owl specs (WG chose to use RDF/XML) -- my apologies for poor wording. I also didn't actually argue in favor of N3 per se -- I argued for Dave BEckett's Turtle, and suggested the WG could make it a note -- not a spec, but a very useful way to write RDF/OWL - even better than the AS in many cases IMHO however, I do agree with your conclusion: At 23:39 +0200 4/5/04, Frank van Harmelen wrote: >I find it very surprising that anybody believes that any single >syntax will do for all purposes, and all audiences. So at least, in >the WG documents, you should think who the intended audience of the >document is, and what is most suited for them. Sure, RDF/XML is >appropriate for some (e.g. a document for engineers about parsing >OWL), but not for all However, I personally have always had far more difficulty reading the AS than the N3 or RDF/XML -- I also notice that my favorite SW text to date [1] uses the RDF/XML syntax as the common denominator language - so I suspect this, like lots of other things, is not something where there are hard and fast rules as to which is better for what... -JH [1] A Semantic Web Primer, Antoniou and van Harmelen, MIT Press, forthcoming. -- Professor James Hendler http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies 301-405-2696 Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab. 301-405-6707 (Fax) Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 240-277-3388 (Cell)
Received on Monday, 5 April 2004 18:04:00 UTC