RE: Surface vs. Abstract Syntax, was: RE: What do the ontologists want

>At 09:47 PM 5/18/01 -0400, Jonathan Borden wrote:
>>perhaps the greatest benefit of XML is that its surface syntax directly
>>represents its abstract syntax, and for someone familiar with XML, this
>>means that one can look at a document, even in the absense of a schema, and
>>get a pretty good idea of its structure.
>
>Hmmm... I was speaking with an old friend over the weekend, and 
>touched upon this general topic.  He made an observation (which I 
>may relay imperfectly) to the effect that one difficulty encountered 
>by much early AI research could to traced to the idea that giving 
>something a meaningful name could not be equated with giving it a 
>meaning.  This struck me as similar to some of the things Pat has 
>said about semantics of RDF (or any language).

Yes. In AI this idea has a name; it is called the "Gensym fallacy".

>Turning to XML:  I don't think the structure of a typical XML 
>document would be anything like as clear if the tag/attribute names 
>were replaced by random strings.

OK, OK, I give in. I promise not to traash XML *as a text markup 
language* ever again. I've even come to see the utility of the 
</redundantRepetitionOfLabelOnOpeningBracket> idea when one is 
marking up text, since there is no way to guarantee that the text 
itself does not accidentally contain a 'bare' closing parenthesis. 
So I guess my scorn has to be reserved for the use of a text markup 
language as a formal notation. But I will try to keep this toned down 
to the occassional unkind joke.

Pat Hayes

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Received on Thursday, 24 May 2001 15:43:57 UTC