Re: LANG: A proposal for the layering problem

Dan Connolly wrote:
>
> I'm not sure I really like this, but I know I prefer
> it to the same-syntax-different-semantics approaches.
>
> i.e. in this approach, if you mean something
> different, you say it a different way.
>
> I would find it completely unacceptable if
> two different W3C recommendations gave
> different meanings to the same document.
>

I am glad you have this "meaning" thing figured out better than I do. I
think you are rather close to constraining us into a position that we will
not like. For example: the RDF/XML conversion of N3 uses the
rdf:parseType="log:quote" to contain contexts. To N3 these contexts contain
statements, to RDF/XML the "log:quote" looks like literal XML. I am not
suggesting that this be the final solution to the problem, on the otherhand
_some day_ you may wish to formalize N3 (perhaps SWLL etc.) into a W3C
recommendation. I hope that the "meaning" of such documents will not be
constrained by today's RDF.

When RDF 2 comes along is RDF 1 retracted? Will the 'meaning' of RDF 1
documents change? A simple example (insert well know namespace decls)

<rdf:RDF>
    <rdf:Description ID="foo">
        <prop xmlns="http://example.org/ex">bar</prop>
    </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

will this document 'mean' the same under the current RDF recommendation, as
with the hopefully soon to be released revision?

Not to be difficult, but we need to be reasonable. It has not bothered me
that the 'meaning' of an RDF vs. an OWL document might be different: The
true meaning of an OWL document should only be known to an OWL processor.
RDF holds the syntax in triples, but the meaning of OWL is in the Classes
and Properties of the OWL language. How could it be otherwise?

Jonathan

Received on Friday, 22 March 2002 17:20:57 UTC