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Re: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really Extensib

• To: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@o...>
• Subject: Re: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really Extensible?
• From: Bill de hÓra <bill@d...>
• Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:58:28 +0100
• Cc: Dare Obasanjo <dareo@m...>, John Cowan <cowan@m...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <00a001c3612a$ccebc4f0$b6f5d3ce@s...>
• References: <830178CE7378FC40BC6F1DDADCFDD1D1678843@R...> <00a001c3612a$ccebc4f0$b6f5d3ce@s...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

Jonathan Borden wrote:

> On the other hand if people are suggesting that RDF or OWL is intended to
> define some type of universal meaning for all XML documents, that is plain
> silly. 

+1

> The only meaning defined by RDF or OWL is specifically for RDF/XML
> documents i.e. a specific dialect of XML (a syntactic subset) for which
> there has been defined a formal semantics. 

This might be true for OWL. The RDF semantics doesn't care about XML 
and is certainly not specified with only the XML in mind.


> These documents are specifically
> intended to be "understood" by software programs which have been programmed
> in accordance with (e.g. to "understand") this formal semantics. Such
> programs can "exchange meaning" by transmitting documents encoded in the
> RDF/XML syntax. Namespaces are essential to this particular technology -- 
> not because there is no other way to do what XML Namespaces do, rather
> because these specifications are written requiring that all XML elements and
> attributes are XML Namespace qualified. Don't like it -- use another syntax,

I think XML Namespaces are essential /to the spec/ since that's the 
only specified way to transport URIs in XML (RDF was a usecase for 
XML Namespaces). You won't find any privileged status for 
namespaces, XML or otherwise, in the RDF MT.


> write another formal semantics (if you care) for that syntax, and teach your
> software how to understand your syntax. The fact that your software and
> syntax isn't RDF and doesn't use namespaces doesn't at all affect the
> software that does use RDF and is namespace aware.

What's the other formal semantics for again? :) Ntriples is 
specified for RDF and does not require its own model theory. RDF was 
*designed* that way. You simply have to specify how the syntax 
corresponds to the structure of an RDF graph. As far as I'm 
concerned, the only issue regarding RDF syntax is getting a better 
one adopted by a working group.

Bill de hÓra

• References:
  • RE: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really Extensible?
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>
  • Re: Symbol Grounding and Running Code: Is XML Really Extensible?
    • From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>

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