Re: Literals (Re: model theory for RDF/S)

PFPS asserted:
> If you can understand a specification like Corba or JTAPI or even the
> meaning of a programming language, like C++ or ML, then you should be
> able to work your way through a model theoretic specification.  After
> all, RDF and DAML+OIL are a lot more simple than Corba or C++!

Speaking as a true naif here, no.  They're not.  I'm not at all sure what
it means to "understand the meaning of a programming language."  To my
knowledge, programming languages don't have meanings.  They're just
syntactic sugars, in which programs are written.  Sometimes very smart
people can figure out some formal semantics of some of those programs,
provided the programs aren't even a little bit complex.

So when someone like me sets out to read and comprehend Patrick Hayes'
"RDF Model Theory" document, it's bloody slow going.  (Thanks to Patrick
for doing that work, btw.)

When those of us who are used to sitting down and building things try to
wrap our brains around this RDF stuff it gets tricky.  It has these two
weird properties in that it's all wrapped up in FOPL which we learned
back in undergrad days was a formal system not connected to the real
world.  And it's supposedly the way real knowledge is to be represented,
such as business information, rules of operation, and so forth.

I still haven't figured out how to synthesize the two notions; I don't
think I'm atypically stupid.  I could go on, here, but I think Peter
himself pointed at the problem about a week ago, in a note to
rdf-interest:
	"I'm not happy at all with the fact that RDF has a 51 paragraph
	document just to define what a literal is."

Amen, brother.

-- 
--Alan Wexelblat
wex@media.mit.edu		http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/
CHI'02 Panels Chair 		moderator, rec.arts.sf.reviews

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 17:36:22 UTC