anyone can say anything about anything... how about lists?

This regards...

"ACTION:   5.5 list syntax or semantics in RDF CORE, Semantic Web
Coordination (Dan Connolly) "

-- WebOnt minutes 7Nov
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Nov/0119.html

I'm not sure exactly who should answer this
question, but in order to be able to refer
to it from varios fora, I'm sending it
to www-archive...


The WebOnt WG has an issue on lists...
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/webont-issues.html#I5.5-List-syntax-or-semantics

and so does RDF core...
http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-seq-representation

RDF core decided to add Collection/first/rest
syntax back in May, but leaned away from specifying
semantics like "all lists exist" and "each list
can only have one first" and "nothing
is in the nil list".

Recent WebOnt semantics drafts supply those
semantics.

Is this OK?

(a) yes. anybody can say anything about anything,
so it doesn't matter what WebOnt says
about rdf:first

(b) yes; what WebOnt says about rdf:first is
*consistent* with what RDF core says about
rdf:first, and it's OK for higher layers
to constrain what lower layers specify.

(c) yes; what WebOnt says about rdf:first is
exactly what RDF Core means; RDF Core just
doesn't have formal mechanisms to say it.
WebOnt has FunctionalProperty and such,
so it's fine for them to formalize these things.

(d) no; what WebOnt says about lists
conflicts with what RDF Core says about
lists. [I'd consider this a bug, but there
has been a sufficiently large email blizzard
around this stuff that I think it would
be worth the CG's time to make sure this
doesn't happen.]

(e) no; WebOnt can't change what RDF Core
says about lists, period; not even
to refine/constrain/formalize it in
a way that's consistent with what RDF Core
said.

(f) yes; WebOnt can change what RDF Core
says about lists because it's part of W3C,
and W3C owns the rdf namespace.

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Wednesday, 13 November 2002 14:21:10 UTC