- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: 25 Mar 2002 09:24:35 -0600
- To: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@openhealth.org>
- Cc: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>, WebOnt <www-webont-wg@w3.org>
On Sat, 2002-03-23 at 04:26, Jonathan Borden wrote: > 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. Yup; it's broken. log:quote was supposed to be using some syntax not used up by the RDF specs, but in fact the RDF specs _do_ say that parseType="log:quote" gets treated like parseType="Literal", which is inconsistent with the way cwm does things. > 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. How could it be otherwise? If there are bzillions of "today's RDF" consumers out there that understand the meaning one way, there's nothing I can put in a spec to change that. > When RDF 2 comes along is RDF 1 retracted? That depends on a lot of things. If RDF 1 and RDF 2 intersect, then the meaning given by RDF 2 to the intersecting documents will have to be consistent with the meaning given by RDF 1. > 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? I don't think I understand the question. > 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. Ah.. I misspoke: I meant that it would be unacceptable if different recommendations gave *conflicting*, i.e. *inconsistent* meanings to the same document. It's all very well if one of them just tells you more about the document. > 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 > -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Monday, 25 March 2002 10:24:38 UTC