MISC: Internet Media Type registration: proposed TAG finding

The W3C TAG has come up with a proposed finding about internet media type
registration, which will affect WebOnt sooner or later.  Also, a message
about the finding was sent to the RDF Core (but not to WebOnt), and there
already is discussion in RDF Core as to how to handle media types for RDF
and other Semantic Web languages.

[The initial message states ``RDF (RDFCore, RDFS, WebOnt, ...)''.  I find
it rather disconcerting to see words to the effect that WebOnt is (just)
making another dialect of RDF, no different in status from RDFS.  I ask
that the WebOnt WG discuss whether to send a polite note back rejecting
this interpretation of our work.]

I propose that we let this issue affect us sooner, as I believe that there
is a correct way and an incorrect way to handle the issue.  Moreover, these
two views differ on how RDFS is treated.

I believe that the incorrect way to handle the issue of media types for RDF
and other Semantic Web languages is to have one media type for all
RDF-derived languages.  Thus RDF/XML (RDF written in XML), RDFS/XML (RDFS
written in XML), and OWL/RDF/XML (OWL written in RDF written in XML) would
all have the same media type, and applications would have to determine
which kind of processing to perform by the content of the documents.

I believe that the correct way to handle the issue of media types for RDF
and other Semantic Web languages is to have a different media type for each
Semantic Web language that requires different processing.  By ``different
processing'' I mean that either there are some different semantic
conditions for the language, or there are some extra syntactic constructs
in the language.  Thus even if OWL could be written completely in RDF/XML
(which would require an official dark triples solution from RDF Core),
there would be a different media type for OWL because a processor for OWL
would have to take into account the extra semantics for OWL constructions.

This view of media types for RDF and other Semantic Web languages has the
corrollory that RDFS has a different media type from RDF.  Why?  Because
RDFS has extra semantic conditions in its model theory.  



Questions:  Should this be a WebOnt issue?  Probably, so .....

TITLE:	Internet Media Type for OWL
DESCRIPTION: The W3C TAG has just issued a proposed finding about internet
	     media types.  WebOnt will almost certainly have to identify,
	     and perhaps register, an internet media type for OWL
	     documents.  RDF Core will almost certainly also identify an
	     internet media type for RDF.  WebOnt will have to coordinate
	     with RDF Core on the relationship between the media types.
RAISED BY:   Peter F. Patel-Schneider
REFERENCE:   http:///lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2002May/0072.html


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2002 07:17:46 UTC