Re: rdf inclusion

>At 05:11 PM 5/23/02 -0500, pat hayes wrote:
>>This isn't saying we should abandon RDF, only that we have to be 
>>able to use some other kinds of brick to do some of the other 
>>things.
>
>We seem to keep on bumping up against this in various guises, and 
>I'm not sure why it seems to such an intractable problem for this 
>community.

Me neither. It seems dumb-as-dirt obvious to me, I don't understand 
why people keep saying the opposite.

>Pragmatically, it seems that any number of programmers have been 
>able to build things using RDF in ways that respect the simple 
>assertional nature of RDF for the most part, but also add features 
>as needed for the purpose at hand.

Fine.

>  Rigorous logic seems to be saying that there is something wrong about this,

No, not that theres anything WRONG with it. What is wrong is to do 
this - which goes beyond the RDF spec in some way - and also 
simultaneously insist that one is conforming to the RDF specs. That 
is wrong because of the meaning of the English words 'conform' and 
'specification', not because of anything to do with logic.

If it turns out from all this experimentation that some feature is 
generally useful, then let's incorporate that useful feature into 
RDF2 or OWL or whatever the other language gets called. But just to 
keep things clear, please don't confuse RDF with RDF2 or OWL, OK?

>  but these implemented systems work (pretty much) as their 
>programmer-designers intended.

Right, but the real issue is, what about what all the *other* people 
are going to make of it? What happens when some content is published 
in RDF+A, and means something to the A-programmer-designer and his 
friends and colleagues, but gets read by an engine written by a bunch 
of guys who don't speak English, which understands RDF+B, or even 
just plain RDF ?

>Who's right here?  It's hard to understand why, with so many 
>top-class minds working at and around this problem, there's no 
>clearer general insight into this dichotomy (formalism vs 
>implementation) than there was (say) 18 months ago.

I wish it wasn't being expressed as a 'versus'. I have nothing 
against anyone implementing anything. But the whole SW idea seems to 
depend on there being a publicly agreed standard for expressing 
content, right? That's why we have the WGs and all these emails. ....

Pat
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Received on Tuesday, 28 May 2002 14:43:05 UTC