Re: Semantic information for math representations of physics

Copies to:      	www-math@w3.org
From:           	Paul Libbrecht <paul@activemath.org>
Date sent:      	Thu, 3 Feb 2005 14:16:00 +0100
To:             	"John Fletcher" <J.P.Fletcher@aston.ac.uk>
Subject:        	Re: Semantic information for math representations of physics
Forwarded by:   	www-math@w3.org
Date forwarded: 	Thu, 03 Feb 2005 13:16:37 +0000

> 
> Le 3 févr. 05, à 14:06, John Fletcher a écrit :
> > I would like to join in this discussion as a potential user, at the
> > stage of knowing what I want to do and having some design choices.
> 
> Fun.
> 
> The bone point with extensibility is extensibility of the related
> tools... Doing it in RDF, for example, raises the need for an amount
> of tools which not, for example, as mature as XML libraries.
> 
> How would you handle extensibility for the conversion to and from
> these programmes?
> 
> paul
> 

Paul

Thanks for the reply.

Before I knew about RDF I was thinking that all exchange would be 
in XML.  I have a database program (E4Graph) which can handle 
input and output as XML.  So my calculation engine has to put its 
data into the E4Graph database, which then handles export and 
import.  

The extension is in the definition of the extra tags beyond MathML.  
One application is using distributed processing, when the 
extensions are in a closed environment.

When I heard of RDF it seemed to be silly to reinvent a set of tags 
when there were standards out there.

I have been monitoring this list and collecting possible tools without 
getting any clear insight (yet) on how to proceed.

One model is for a query tool where users ask for answers to 
problems and the tool answers from its database if it has the 
answer, or else works it out and stores it.  The extensions are 
needed to transfer the answer to another program if that is what is 
needed. The answer may have associated data e.g. units of 
measurement, meaning of variables etc.

Thanks 

John


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr John P. Fletcher          Tel: (44) 121 204 3389 (direct line)
Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry (CEAC),
School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS),
Aston University,            Fax: (44) 121 359 4094
Aston Triangle,              Email: J.P.Fletcher@aston.ac.uk
BIRMINGHAM B4 7ET  U.K.      CEAC Web site 
http://www.ceac.aston.ac.uk/

Received on Thursday, 3 February 2005 13:30:27 UTC