Re: basic decisions underlying DAML-ONT (defined classes)

"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
> 
> From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: basic decisions underlying DAML-ONT (defined classes)
> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:02:59 -0500
> 
> > "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
> >
> > >  For example, I would like to know
> > > whether there is a basic decision in DAML-ONT to not allow necessary and
> > > sufficient conditions for classes.
> >
> > No... I/we just punted for lack of inspiration.
> >
> > I tried, for maybe 10 minutes, to design such an idiom,
> > and then gave up, since all the designs that occured
> > to me involved ugly reification/quoting idioms. And this
> > was before I had decided to go beyond RDF 1.0 with a simplified
> > list/collection syntax.
> >
> > Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
> 
> Why not create a new kind of object, perhaps called a description, which
> would ``contain'' restrictions and qualifications.   The meaning of a
> description would be the intersection of these restrictions and
> qualifications.  A class could then be defined as ``equivalentTo'' to a
> description.

Yes, that's the basic idea. It's called reification
in the RDF specs; it's called quoting elsewhere.

The details tend to be messy, but I don't think they're
beyond reach. I hope to sketch something shortly...

> Note that I am not proposing this as the best way of proceeding, just that
> it would not be a major syntactic change to DAML-ONT.
> 
> Peter Patel-Schneider

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

Received on Thursday, 12 October 2000 13:39:46 UTC