Re: MT for imports

In a message dated 11/14/2002 8:48:37 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
pfps@research.bell-labs.com writes:

> 
> From: "Massimo Marchiori" <massimo@w3.org>
> Subject: RE: MT for imports (was: Re: Imports Proposal)
> Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 02:14:15 +0100
> 
> >
> >>I remain entirely baffled by all of this.
> >>
> >>As Jerome Euzenat wrote:
> >>
> >>>The timed web structure applies to ontologies exactly like it applies to
> >>>hyperlinks in html, xsl:include and xsl:imports in XSLT, etc.
> >>
> >>Of course, some advanced version of imports would depend on the "timed 
> web
> >>structure" (Massimo), but I cannot see how that should stop us from 
> providing
> >>something simple.
> 
> >>Lots and lots of computer languages provide import-like things, varying
> >>from C to Scheme, and from LaTeX to XML. None of these have any of the
> >>problems raised in the preceding discussion. Pat's example of someone
> >>changing an imported file is common to all of these, happily ignored by
> >>all of them, and rightly so, since it doesn't seem to break any of
> >>them, the meaning and pragmatics of these import constructions is
> >>entirely clear for all of them. If it works for XML, why wouldn't it
> >>work for OWL?
> 
> >>I can simply not imagine standing up in front of a crowd, proudly
> >>explaining OWL, and having to admit that,... eh... no,
> >>well... actually, in OWL you cannot import other people's ontologies...
> 
> >Frank, I entirely agree. Note what you say is (I think) perfectly
> >compatible with
> >http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Nov/0164.html , and
> >what others (including, implicitly, Jerome in his last
> >post) have been advocating as well: the operational import. 
> 
> I am now totally confused.  Frank seems to be arguing that any reading of
> owl:imports, declarative or opertational, does not suffer from timing
> problems. 


I thought frank's main point was that it will be embarrassing to many of us 
when introducing OWL if we have a language that does not support even a very 
simple notion of imports.  
I support this notion as well.

 There is an implicit dependancy on the state of the file system,
> 
> i.e., the WWW, but so what?
> 
> >Specifically,
> >rdfs:seeAlso is already there, and could profitably serve
> >our needs. It's when these "pragmatic", as you say, needs are escalated to
> >touch the logical structure (entailment), that we start
> >to have problems; and we'd better postpone those problems to v2, as they
> >would in all likelihood required a timed RDF datamodel, and
> >even more cycles lost. Users don't need this for the moment, they just
> >need, pragmatically, something that lets them import files.
> 
> Huh?  How is using owl:imports to add the meaning of another document to
> the current one any different from using rdfs:seeAlso to ... add the
> meaning of another document to the current one?
> 
> [...]
> 
> >-M
> 
> peter
>