what's in a name? Common Web Language Report

in light of our discussions of the clarity of ARIA nomenclature, 
especially for those for whom english is not their first or even 
second language, it is worthwhile considering the Incubator Group 
Report: "Common Web Language", located at:

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/XGR-urw3-20080331/

<quote 
cite="http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/XGR-urw3-20080331/">

1. Introduction

The CWL, a common web language for humans and computers, must solve the 
following two big problems exist in the present web world. One is the 
language barriers in the web, and another is lacking of machine 
understandability for the contents in the web.

Language barrier: 
    Currently almost all web pages are written in English. It is 
    convenient for English speaking people but it is not for 
    non-English speaking people, and those people are the majority 
    in the world. Those people cannot get information easily, because 
    it is not written in their mother tongue. Recently machine 
    translation facilities are equipped in the web, but it is not the 
    solutions. Machine translation has a problem of quality and 
    coverage of languages.

Machine Understandability: 
    HTML tags give information on structure of web documents, but they do 
    not give semantic information on each words nor sentences in 
    documents. It means HTM tags information is insufficient to 
    intellectually utilize contents of web pages. The RDF and OWL have a 
    framework to give semantic information but they do not have standard 
    vocabulary to describe web contents. 

1.1 Objective of CWL

Objectives of CWL is for exchanging information through the web and also 
for enabling computers to process information semantically. The CWL 
allows people to describe contents and meta-data of web pages written 
in natural languages and also allows realizing a language barrier free 
world in the web and it will also enable computers to extract semantic 
information and knowledge from web pages accurately.

1.2 Requirement for CWL

The requirements for CWL to achieve the above objectives are the 
followings.

  1. To be independent from any natural languages and shall enable 
     users to develop conversion systems between CWL and each natural 
     language easily.

  2. Different from natural languages, CWL is a unambiguous formal 
     language playing the same role of natural languages for humans.

  3. Concepts included in any natural language can be the vocaburary of 
     CWL.

  4. Surface structure and semantic structure of original document must 
     be expressed in CWL. 

</quote>


CWL is a product of the Common Web Language Incubator Group:

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/cwl/

gregory.
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LANGUAGE, n.  The music with which we charm the serpents guarding 
another's treasure.     -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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            Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
     Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
UBATS: United Blind Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
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Received on Wednesday, 23 April 2008 14:52:52 UTC