Re: [namespaceDocument-8] 14 Theses, take 2

At 06:59 PM 27/02/02 -0500, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>> Because I just have trouble believing in an interesting
>> namespace whose only definitive material is an XML Schema;
>> or any other kind of schema, using "schema" in the syntax-
>> constraint sense.  Can we have some examples please?
>
>Most folks who use DAML+OIL, soon to be WebOnt, to define
>an ontology I th9ink feel they are done without any other material,
>as the best practice is to put the descriptions into the ontology docuement
>where they are explicitly associated with the properties being defined.
>http://www.daml.org/ontologies/uri.html  lists a whole bunch of ontologies
>defined in DAML.

Except for, I don't have any DAML+OIL software on my computer and
I don't know where to go get it.  Your users would be far better off
if there were a browser-viewable namespace document which includes
the information given in the paragraph above with pointers to the
getting-started resources.  I would think that this would make the
job of DAML evangelists a lot easier. 

>>   It's hard to see how SVG and MathML and RDF and
>> X3D can be made usefully human-readable.  We're not allowed
>> to talk about whether namespace docs should be human-readable
>> until we have solutions in place for the whole spectrum of
>> languages?  I am arguing precisely that namespace documents
>> have an unusually strong requirement for human readability. -Tim
>
>Hang on - SVG is human-readable, as is MathML and X3D -- all are langauges
>for material to be presentedto a human.  We are not talking about making the
>source human-readble I hope.

I thought source was what Dan was talking about.  However, there
are lots of interesting resources which are not particularly
human readable in either their source form or as an effect 
of the way they are normally processed.  Schemas are a good
example.  And I stand my claim that this kind of thing makes
a lousy namespace document precisely because of its lack
of human readability.  -Tim

Received on Thursday, 28 February 2002 14:42:42 UTC