[SCL] Re: request for feedback -- core syntax

[Jon Awbrey]

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pat hayes wrote:
> 
> Guys, I'd appreciate feedback (on something more important than terminology :-).
> 
> After thrashing around for a while, I think that the best choice for
> the 'core' syntax is a KIF-style syntax, but tweaked a little to make
> it easier to read.  Chief changes are these:
> 
> 1.  No explicit syntactic marking of variables: a variable is just a
>     name which is bound by a quantifier.  This makes the examples a lot
>     less ugly to read for many people and gets rid of the need to handle
>     free vars as a special case in the MT.
> 
> 2.  No explicit marking for forall and &: a conjunction is just
>     a list of sentences and the unmarked quantifier case is the
>     forall.  So for example this KIF
> 
> (forall (?x ?y)(implies (and (P ?x)(P ?y)) (P ?x ?y) ))
> 
> would look like this:
> 
> (x y)(implies ((P x)(P y)) (P x y) ))

this is a really bad idea.  communication between math folk
and physics folk was fouled for a couple of generations when
the later adopted the "einstein summation convention" of not
explicitly marking the intended summations in tensor calculus.

ja

> 3. Use of parentheses and first-name-after-'(' as a universal
> grouping device, so that for example the header syntax will be
> 
> (scl:ontology (scl:header <sentence>*) <sentence>+)
> 
> rather than the ad-hoc double-colon thingie I invented.
> 
> QUESTION: Any strong objections to this change?
> 
> Note, I still plan to define a 'strict' KIF dialect which will accept real KIF 3.0 syntax.
> 
> BTW, I am (we are) under severe pressure from other groups who want to use SCL,
> to get a core syntax finished and locked down ASAP, even before the rest of the
> document is finished, so we need to move on this.
> 
> So, strong feelings, please.
> 
> Pat

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