RE: semantics status of RDF(S)

> From: Danny Ayers [mailto:danny@panlanka.net]
> Surely there will always be
> things that are not formalised within RDF(S), so do you a) continually
> extend it to encompass these things as they arise, or b) use 3rd party
> extensions as required.

There's a world of difference between two possible uses of 'are not
formalised'.  One could mean 'have never been discussed, let alone defined'
--- that will certainly be the case for which URIs are used to denote which
concepts.  The other case, which I think is the one Peter's worried about,
is 'are not formally defined and the informal definition is ambiguous'.  For
example, there was some discussion on this list a while back about whether
rdfs:subClassOf had strict subset semantics; the specification appears
ambiguous and DAML+OIL actually makes some assumptions in that area.

> Ok, so what's in RDF(S) now might need tightening
> up, but surely that will get done before too long, in advance of which
> what's wrong with using other formalisms, if necessary your 
> own proprietry ones?

That we get into the HTML 3.2 browser wars again with a different
battlefield --- which is one reason why W3C was set up in the first place.
I've had enough years of writing custom code to sniff which browser
someone's using and emit the appropriate IE3/4/5 / NS3/4/6 / AOL / standard
HTML as appropriate, thanks.  As a developer trying to use this stuff, I
really, do not want to see a re-run of (a) a plethora of proprietary
extensions because the standard is under-powered, and (b) conflicting,
equally-valid interpretations of a loose spec.

		- Peter

Received on Monday, 2 April 2001 13:14:41 UTC