- From: Deborah McGuinness <dlm@KSL.Stanford.EDU>
- Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 23:16:39 -0700
- To: Dieter Fensel <dieter@cs.vu.nl>
- CC: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>, www-webont-wg@w3.org
I agree with Jeff Heflin and Pat Hayes in attempting to not end up with so many layers that users feel overwhelmed both with too much reading with too much cognitive overload. However, I do not think a layered approach is bad, and in fact, I believe it is a necessary component to our solution. I think it is not enough to just use layers as a way of presenting material, I would support the notion that we need to have definitions of layers so that people can make claims about having an implementation that is compliant to level x. I believe mandatory requirements are: 1 - a layer that is simple enough for the masses. (that in my opinion means dropping some things from the lightest of the current owl lite proposal). 2 - a layer that is expressive enough to handle approximately full DAML+OIL I believe a reasonable solution includes another layer 3 - a frame-syntax-expressible layer that includes all of 1 above plus some of the more complicated constructs useful for epistemological adequacy. deborah Dieter Fensel wrote: > At 11:52 AM 4/5/2002 -0500, Jeff Heflin wrote: > >... > > > >4) I am not in favor of formal sub-languages. If the Semantic Web > >follows the "layer cake" design, there will already be plenty of layers; > >if we starting adding sublayers to each layer, then things just get too > >confusing (I've already heard people complain that they have to read too > >many specs to understand this Semantic Web stuff: XML, RDF, RDF-Schema, > >DAML+OIL, that's a lot of reading!). However, I would be in favor in > >using the layers informally to present the language. This allows people > >to learn the basics quickly, and to gain proficiency in the language at > >their own pace. > Hi Jeff, > > I am not quite sure how deeply you thought about your argument. > Layering the language does not introduce any new documents. > Instead it helps to break a long and thick document into a number > of significant smaller ones. Therefore, most readers have to read > less and not more material. They (tool and application builders) > can refer to a smaller piece of technology they want to support and > they need. By giving this strata a name you have a defined way > in which people can realize the level of complexity they need. > Without such strata you have one bad alternative: > > - people are forced to subscribe to an over-complex approach > for their goals, or > - people introduce ad-hoc subsets without any clear linkage > to other ad-hoc subsets. > > As I argue for such a point of view now for more than three years > without having heart any convincing counter-argument I am not > going to add one more word on it. > > Doei, > > Dieter > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > Dieter Fensel > Tel. (mobil): +31-(0)6-51850619, > http://www.google.com/search?q=dieter or http://www.fensel.com -- Deborah L. McGuinness Knowledge Systems Laboratory Gates Computer Science Building, 2A Room 241 Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-9020 email: dlm@ksl.stanford.edu URL: http://ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm (voice) 650 723 9770 (stanford fax) 650 725 5850 (computer fax) 801 705 0941
Received on Monday, 8 April 2002 02:17:29 UTC