- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:43:05 -0400
- To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>, Public W3C <www-archive@w3.org>
* Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org> [2003-07-28 11:28-0400] > > On Saturday, Jul 26, 2003, at 12:12 US/Eastern, Dan Brickley wrote: > > >* Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org> [2003-07-25 20:51-0400] > >> > >> > >>The nearest cyc term is (from previous discussions) > >>cyc:ConceptualWork. This something abstract, not concrete. > >> > >>The word "documents" has been used on this thread because it is > >>shorter. > > > >>From previous discussion, am I right in saying you'd count > >"The Bible", "Hamlet" etc as conceptual works; but foaf:Document (the > >RDF class) or cyc:ConceptualWork (another RDF class) as not being > >conceptual works. > > > >If so, what is it about the former that makes them more 'conceptual'? > > 1. I point you to a whole ontology - check the cyc classifications. > > 2. Nothing. They are all conceptual. Only things which convey > information > are works, in the sense of opus, oeuvre, something which decreases > entropy > and hence takes energy to create. There's the basis of a distinction there, although the connection with the HTTP URI scheme naming policies is pretty weak. > >Are you claiming that RDF classes are purely mathematic constructs, > >discovered rather than created? > > I make no untestable statements about whether they are discovered or > created. > But I do distinguish them from for example an RDF schema, which has > content > and can be represented in RDF/XML or N3, can be copyright, etc etc. > > >I ask because I have several RDF implementations which depend on > >classes > >being allowed in httpRange... > > Could you manage a transition to one in which you use a hash, please? > It is going to be easier to fix it now than later. For FOAF, we could probably pull the switcheroo now with a fair amount of annoyance for implementors. But FOAF files also use Dublin Core, RSS1, MusicBrainz, XMP etc namespaces, all of which are named with a '/'. Also they use my wordnet namespace... The wordnet case is trickier. We have a namespace with 50,000 terms (classes) in it, named like http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/Tree and dereference-able. There is no obvious parallel design with a # that allows both (a) reasonably intuitive end-user markup in the instance data and (b) terms to be individually derferenceable to something useful and smaller than the entire multi-megabyte dictionary. Do you really think it's worth pulling the rug out from under the feet of 80%+ of RDF early adopter vocabularies? Just as things are starting to take off... Seems risky to me, for a somewhat academic point... If we do it we'll need a damn good explanation for the disruption. Dan
Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 11:43:05 UTC