Re: defaults

"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
> ... Input completion is definitely a poor relation of general defaults, at
> least in some aspects.  However, I claim that it is often adequate for the job. ...

If I understand the idea, it's like theory completion, but passes the buck
to the input.  So is the idea that were given some input and then process it
under the assumption that this is the total input and that we will get no more
(related) input.  It seems to me that this doesn't address well the situation
we face on the web, where we inherently have to deal with partial information
with more input becoming available all the time.

I think the only answer to providing some support for defaults is to do it
they way it's been done in KL-TWO (as I recall) and Classic.  The idea was,
if I remember right, to include conventions for providing defaults that
was outside the core of the language and for which no semantics was given.
This would give people with a strong need for working with defaults a
standard way to do it in OWL without doing damage to the semantics of
the core language.  Perhaps a few years of experimentation 
with the mechanism would help us engineer a better solution.

Peter and Deborah, you guys were involved with these systems -- do
you think this is a workable approach?


Tim

Received on Tuesday, 22 January 2002 11:31:00 UTC