- From: Frank Manola <fmanola@mitre.org>
- Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 16:41:11 -0400
- To: Brian McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- CC: "R.V.Guha" <guha@guha.com>, rdf core <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
Brian McBride wrote: > snip > > I still think that the right way to do this is to lock all the > logicians in a room without a lavatory with all the beer they can drink > until they agree on a solution and advise both WG's accordingly. > Are you looking for volunteers to proctor this process? :-) > > I would like to hear the WG's thoughts on: > > o to address this problem the solution must be normative; W3C notes > and non-normative appendices don't hack it. > I'm fundamentally supportive of this new initiative, but as a "process" matter I'd like to hear more on exactly what has to be "normative" in what's being proposed. I understand that the WG needs a normative definition of the MT. We have Pat's WD. As I understand it, the new proposal doesn't really involve changing the model-theoretic definition of RDF that we already have (it involves some slight changes to the document text (the introduction), but not changes to the model theory itself). In addition, we have two new documents: (a) a description of a technique for defining semantics of languages; (b) a description of the semantics of RDF in that language. Now, in the current MT WD, it seems to me that what we've said is normative is the MT, not the technique Pat used for describing it. If we publish (b) as also normative, what we're saying is that we assert that the semantics given in (b) are equivalent to those in the other MT document. Now, that certainly means (assuming we're being responsible about what we say) that we understand (a) well enough to verify that (b) actually does specify equivalent semantics, but does that require that (a) itself be "normative"? What does it mean for (a) to be "normative"? If the proposal were instead to use FOL to describe the semantics, would we also need a document to say that FOL was "normative"? (Clearly I'm a little confused, but I hope you get what I'm driving at). --Frank -- Frank Manola The MITRE Corporation 202 Burlington Road, MS A345 Bedford, MA 01730-1420 mailto:fmanola@mitre.org voice: 781-271-8147 FAX: 781-271-875
Received on Thursday, 13 June 2002 16:32:51 UTC