[SCL] Second version of the SCL draft spec here

[pat hayes]

>pat hayes wrote:
>>Murray Altheim wrote to Chris Menzel:
>>
>>>Chris,
>>>
>>>Not wanting to add too much to your workload, but one of the things
>>>I'd really appreciate would be that all "major" components of the
>>>SCL spec have HTML link anchors on them, so that they establish URLs
>>>which can be used to identify them when people build from the SCL
>>>spec.
>>
>>Good idea if those are just XHTML anchors, but...
>
>That's all they are. The semantics are defined at specific locations
>in the document, I'm just wanting a way to point to them.

OK, sorry if I jumped on you there.

>
>>>This is what I've described before as "published subject
>>>identifiers" (PSIs), and is what essentially is used in OWL, Dublin
>>>Core, etc. By "major" components, I would include anything that a
>>>derived concrete syntax might need to connect it up with the SCL
>>>abstract syntax, either in prose or in machine code/markup.
>>>
>>>For example, owl:Thing is defined in XML by "Thing" in the "owl"
>>>namespace. There's also the URL
>>>
>>>    http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#Thing
>>
>>BUt the *denotative* status of such URIrefs is highly 
>>controversial; the W3C TAG group is in turmoil about this very 
>>issue even as we speak.
>
>I realize you want this all to sync up with what they're doing, but
>I'd suggest just ignoring them.

I can't, I'm one of them.

>They'll be arguing about this two
>years from now too. You only pay attention to those you consider an
>authority. I guess I don't consider the W3C to have any authority;
>they're just one of a number of industry consortia. I think they
>burned up that status on this question several years ago, and they've
>been wasting precious human resources on it ever since. If the people
>contributing to that discussion would have spent that energy digging
>wells, the people of Africa would have a clean water supply by now.
>What's more important are the communities of people doing real work.
>Much of what the W3C has done in the past few years has been counter-
>productive to real work. You want real work done here, right?
>
>>I agree that this would be worth doing, but we need to be extremely 
>>clear what exactly it is that we take these names to be denoting, 
>>particularly in the abstract-syntax framework.
>
>Those anchors are just pointing to the definition of the SCL language
>components.

OK, fine. No disagreement. But remember that you are talking to 
logicians here, so its tempting for them, even if not you, to use 
things like this as, er, logical names; and then we are in a 
potential spiral.

>If you declare that in the SCL document that the use of a
>specific URI is meant to mean X, it means X. It doesn't mean Y. You
>are the author of the document, you declare your own meaning. What
>the W3C TAG says is relevant only to those that pay attention to what
>they say. I demand the right to author my owned damned documents and
>declare their meaning, absent anything they say.

Actually that is pretty much what they are saying as well. And for 
the record, my main concern in that discussion is to stop them saying 
anything daft rather then making them say anything positive.

>Now, from your most recent message, you've stated that you put a very
>high concern in contributing to the W3C "Semantic Web" effort. If we
>are to all come clean, I suppose by now that it might go without saying
>that it would be difficult for me to care less about what goes on in
>the W3C.

:-) I had the general impression already.

>I consider the KR/Ontological Engineering community to be
>functioning just fine without the W3C.

Oh, sure, THAT is. So is the database and the Rules communities. But 
none of them are going to get the SW actually started up. (BUt let us 
put this debate aside, or take it off-line if you like.)

>So I personally am not centrally
>concerned with the W3C and have no particular desire to please their
>set of requirements.

I am not really interested in conforming to W3C so much as being of 
use to them.

>If that puts us at odds in my designing the XCL syntax, I can only
>provide you that fair warning. My work conforms to XML 1.0 2nd Edition,
>plus (begrudgingly) the XML Namespaces Recommendation, but I'm not going
>to begin to try to follow the myriad of conformance spaghetti on
>everything else.

I feel a responsibility to take XML schema part 2 slightly seriously 
for datatyping, but only when it gets rewritten.

What may put us at oods is that Im not the least interested in Topic 
Maps or in conforming to whatever conventions they may suggest.. BUt 
I really do think that we can agree to disagree on motives and still 
agree on technical matters, if we both agree to tread lightly.

>I'm sure there are other XML experts who can design a
>syntax, if this doesn't work out, or if having my name on the XCL spec
>is politically damaging [and while it may sound like it, I'm not
>blustering -- I really just don't care one way or another about what
>the W3C says about URIs -- I'd like to help if time permits and we can
>come to a good working agreement on what needs to be done].

Well, I sympathize. I want the W3C to say something sensible about 
URIs, and Im working on it. But I hope we (you and us) can work 
together without necessarily agreeing about the W3C.

>
>>This would be well worth discussing, in fact. What does the name of 
>>an abstract syntactic category denote, exactly? This is relevant to 
>>any attempt to include a quotation mechanism into the SCL core.
>  >
>>>So essentially, I'd like to see something akin to
>[...]
>>>    http://cl.tamu.edu/docs/scl/1.0/#forall
>
>E.g., if that URI points to the definition of 'forall' in SCL, then
>any use of that URI has identity with that definition. If we declare
>that to be the case, it's the case. For purposes of illustration,
>these two would be equivalent/interchangeable:
>
>  <forall variable="x">
>    <type>TrailerTruck</type>
>  </forall>
>
>  <quantifier name="http://cl.tamu.edu/docs/scl/1.0/#forall" variable="x">
>    <type>TrailerTruck</type>
>  </quantifier>
>
>...if we declare them to be. And we can do that. We just do. No
>clicking of our shiny red heels is necessary, no asking the man
>behind the curtain for permission.

Point taken. And Im OK with that, though it would be *nice* if we 
could do this in a way that was at least interoperable with eg the 
OWL conventions for use of URIrefs with fragIDs. Worth at least 
making an effort in that direction, anyway. (I don't think this will 
be very hard to do, just needs us to be a wee bit careful about what 
we say in the logic.)

Pat

PS. Do you know Enrico Motta? His 'magpie' was the big hit at the 
ISWC last week.

>
>Murray
>
>......................................................................
>Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
>Knowledge Media Institute
>The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .
>
>  White House defiant despite deadliest strike on forces since end of war
>    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1076578,00.html
>  US defiant after Baghdad attack
>    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3186074.stm
>  US defiant on X-Ray prisoners
>    http://old.smh.com.au/news/0202/10/world/world7.html
>  US defiant on war crimes court
>    http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/07/01/bosnia.peacekeeping/?related
>  US stands defiant despite isolation in climate debate
>    http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,526607,00.html
>  US defiant and unrepentant over largest chemical warfare campaign in history
>    http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,923715,00.html
>  Americans defiant over growing divisions with Europe
>    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/06/wter106.xml
>  US defiant over missile defense
> 
>http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/news/2001/space-010717-wwwh1j17.htm
>  Bush defiant over 'Bin Laden tape'
>    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3204612.stm
>  Bush defiant ahead of visit to Britain
>    http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200107/18/eng20010718_75285.html
>  'Bring them on,' defiant Bush warns Iraqi militants
>    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/135155984_iraq03.html
>  Greenhouse gas emissions soar in defiant US
>    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,515198,00.html
>  Europe seethes as defiant US goes its own way
>    http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,747743,00.html
>  Defiant US threatens UNs peacekeeping role
>    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/s596992.htm
>  US isolated but defiant on Cuba sanctions
>    http://www.sunsonline.org/trade/process/followup/1996/04160196.htm


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC	(850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973   home
40 South Alcaniz St.	(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola			(850)202 4440   fax
FL 32501			(850)291 0667    cell
phayes at ihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes