[CL] Misleading passage about XCL

[Pat Hayes]

I entirely agree with Eric. The merits or otherwise of XML are, basically, irrelevant. One might was well try to argue a case for replacing English with Esperanto. It ain't going to happen, and trying to make it happen only makes one look ridiculous.

Right now, virtually all of the semantic Web and linked data traffic is conducted in some variant of XML, and this is not going to change in the forseeable future.  Last time I looked that was several hundred million facts, growing exponentially. Technical W3C specifications are written using "better" notations, and engines are implemented which can parse these notations, and what they actually do in practice is convert them to the XML reference interchange notation and send that over the Internet. Railing against XML serves no purpose than to instantly categorise oneself as a propellor-head geek who is completely out of touch with the real world. 

I do not mean to defend the current state of XCL, which is a ghastly mess and should (IMO) never have been published. But if CL is going to be used by more than a few dozen people, it *must* be given a well-defined and usable XML syntax. 

Pat Hayes


On Oct 19, 2010, at 11:54 AM, Eric Peterson wrote:

> Dr. Sowa;
> 
> Thanks for your tireless efforts with CL.
> 
> Regarding your question about XCL use, I've written and XCL subset to Prolog translator that I hope/expect to use when my team finds a sufficiently scalable logic programming environment for our semantic store.
> 
> I agree with all of your technical criticisms of XML.  But my customers and colleagues are very comfortable with W3C recommendations and XML in particular. So the presence of XCL in your effort has increased my confidence that CL's wheels are on the ground and capable of traction in my world.
> 
> I'm not weighing in on the wordsmithing here.  I would just prefer not seeing XCL support diminish in any way until there is a new web interchange lingua Franca to replace XML.
> 
> Sorry if I'm reading too much into this thread.
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> -Eric
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 11:28 PM, John F. Sowa <sowa at bestweb.net> wrote:
> The following two passages should be deleted from the CL standard:
> 
> On p. 23 Annex A, Section A.1:
> 
>  "The Recommended Common Logic interchange notation is based on XML,
>  a standard which was not available when KIF was originally designed."
> 
> On p. 54 Annex C , Section C.1:
> 
>  "XCL is an XML notation for Common Logic.  It is the intended
>  interchange language for communication Common Logic across a network"
> 
> XML is a notation that is commonly used on the WWW, but it has no
> special properties that make it better or worse than any other
> notation for transmission across a network.  In fact, XML tends
> to make notations more bloated and therefore significantly
> *worse* for data transmission.
> 
> Furthermore, XCL is the *least* frequently used of the 3 annexes.
> Does anyone know of anybody who is using it?
> 
> John
> 
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