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Re: Syntax + object model

• To: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@m...>
• Subject: Re: Syntax + object model
• From: Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...>
• Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 19:08:21 +0100
• Cc: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <4F4182C71C1FDD4BA0937A7EB7B8B4C10935B696@r...>
• Organization: Propylon
• References: <4F4182C71C1FDD4BA0937A7EB7B8B4C10935B696@r...>
• Reply-to: bill.dehora@p...
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

Joshua Allen wrote:
> Ontologists are happy to use whatever syntax
> works.  They used interchange syntax like KIF before there was XML, and
> now they use XML when it makes sense.

I think we've been through this muddle before with Lisp and XML, and 
RDF and XML before that. Enough already.

KIF isn't an interchange syntax, it's an interlingua. KIF happens to 
be inscribed using sexps, but you could switch it XML without losing 
  any meaning so long as you can feed that flavour to a KIF aware 
engine - I heard Genesereth was going to do just that at one point 
(don't know if that's still going to happen).

In this area the main focus of an ontologist is an interlingua not 
an interchange. Naturally XML is somewhat incidental, but it's a 
handy carrier because it's very popular at the moment. Changing KIF 
syntax from sexps to XML isn't so different to porting a KIF engine 
from C++ to Java.

Bill de hÓra
--
Propylon
www.propylon.com

• References:
  • RE: Syntax + object model
    • From: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@m...>

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