- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 14:58:53 -0500
- To: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Cc: webont <www-webont-wg@w3.org>
>From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu> >Subject: Re: URIs for terms: motivation [was: Requirements Document] >Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:36:39 -0500 > >> >This really needs to be discussed in more detail and deconstructed. >> >Its full of nonsequiteurs and misunderstandings. The fact is that >> >the entire concept of URI is completely confused right now, and >> >nothing in any documentation put out by the W3C is enough to clarify >> >it. We can't just take it as a given, we have to have some >> >discussion of what it is supposed to mean. In particular, what is >> >"on the Web" ?? If a document has a URL and uses a referring >> >expression, is that expression on the web? Is the thing named by the >> >expression on the web? What does 'identified distinctly' mean, >> >exactly? None of this is clear, and getting it clear is one of the >> >most important jobs we could do. >> >> >> Pat - thanks for the many very valuable contributions you made today >> (glad you found the missing mail :->) On this one, however, I want >> to make a "Chair's statement" which is that while I personally agree >> with the fact that getting this right is crucial, and hope fervently >> that the W3C Technical Architecture Group is working the issue, I >> think we can RULE THIS OUT OF SCOPE for our working group - we can >> certainly state what version or document, or what assumptions about >> URIs we are making, but trying to solve this is well-beyond our >> charter and I want to make sure we don't spend too much time going in >> this direction... >> -JH OK, Jim, I agree that we can't take the entire making-sense-of-URIs issue on board. I guess I just wanted to register a protest at the idea that statements like the one quoted constituted any kind of answer to the questions that arise. >Let me come down firmly in the middle here. > >I think that there are problems with URIs that need to be addressed before >WebOnt can finish. However, I think that WebOnt doesn't need a complete >solution (even assuming that a complete solution is possible). I agree. >So, in particular, I suggest that the WG mandate the Chair to send a strong >message to the *POWERS*THAT*BE* saying that we desperately need a way of >accessing XML Schema document definitions. > >Other issues that we probably need to have addressed have to do with >identity of URIs. Right now URIs are the same if and only if they are >bit-for-bit identical. However, we should all know many groups of URIs >that are not the same under this definition but that necessarily refer to >the same thing. Ok, let me stake out another middlin' area that I think we do need to at least think seriously about. We use URIs in at least two distinct ways. They are used as logical constant symbols; and they are used to identify documents which contain ontological content written in some language. Right now we just smush these together; I'd like us to at least think about whether we ought to keep these uses separate, if only conceptually, and what the relationships between them are. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Friday, 15 February 2002 14:58:50 UTC