suggested wording for removing weasels from MT

While re-doing the MT it occurred to me that several scattered 
remarks in various places might usefully be put in one place, and the 
result would have the desirable side-effect of removing the 
'weasel-wording' stuff about unasserted triples (and all reference to 
unasserted triples from the formal MT tables, appendices, etc.). The 
resulting paragraph would read approximately as follows.  Comments 
solicited, particularly from anyone who has any strong objections to 
the document saying something like this:

-----
"The model theory assumes that the assertion made by an RDF graph 
consists of the claim that the triples in the graph are true. In 
practice, this assumption may need be modified somewhat. For example, 
the use of a uriref in an RDF graph may be taken as assuming that 
some other RDF  document which is assumed to be the 'definition' of 
the meaning of that term is also assented to by the first graph. In 
this case, the MT should be understood as applying to all the triples 
in both graphs, ie to the merge of the graph with the defining graph 
(or graphs).  Other applications may wish to consider some of the 
triples in a graph, eg those associated with a certain reserved 
namespace, as not being asserted (a status sometimes called a 'dark' 
triple), in which case the MT should be understood as defining the 
intended meaning only of the triples which are intended to be 
asserted.  In other words, the MT should be applied as a meaning 
specification to the triples that are considered to be asserted by 
the graph. In the absence of some external criterion for adding or 
removing triples from consideration, the basic RDF assumption is that 
publishing an RDF document amounts to asserting precisely the triples 
that occur in the graph defined by the document."
-----

This would be the only mention of 'unasserted' triples in the 
document, and the whole issue of what counts as an unasserted or dark 
triple would be relegated to some other domain of consideration, 
which might be called the operational deployment of RDF in some 
larger context. Anyway it would not be in the MT itself.

OK ??

Pat
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC					(850)434 8903   home
40 South Alcaniz St.			(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola,  FL 32501			(850)202 4440   fax
phayes@ai.uwf.edu 
http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes

Received on Monday, 22 April 2002 17:58:38 UTC