Re: getting daml:imports right is easy?

>[I'm forwarding a short interchange between Dan Connolly and me and
>the "importing" issue, with his permission.]
>
>From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
>To: Drew McDermott <drew.mcdermott@yale.edu>
>
>On Tue, 2002-04-23 at 16:32, Drew McDermott wrote:
>[...]
>>     Another version at a different level of abstraction would be that the
>>     current document "in-some-sense-buys-into" the worldview, claims
>>     etc (including associated axioms etc) of the referenced
>>     document. This is hard to get right.
>>
>>  Au contraire.  It's extremely easy to get right. 
>[...]
>
>Do tell how to get the specification of daml:imports right,
>please!
>
>It seems, to me, to involve messy stuff like log:semantics,
>cyc-style 'lifting', and that sort of thing. Doesn't
>look easy to me.

Looks easy to me.

daml:imports foo

where foo is a URL, when included in a document, means that all the 
axioms that can be found by retrieving foo using the usual web 
file-transfer protocols should be considered to be re-asserted inside 
that document.  If you get a 404 error, the set of imported axioms is 
empty.  Why do you need to mention log:semantics?

Just plain importing is easy. What might be hard to get right are 
some more subtle kinds of relationship, eg importing only part of an 
ontology (how to say which part?) or importing just enough to define 
the meaning of some vocabulary (how to distinguish define from merely 
assert?) or importing all the stuff that is consistent with what you 
know but rejecting the rest, things like that.

Pat
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Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2002 22:38:35 UTC