Re: Draft for the response to LC comment 58 (fully typed functional-style syntax)

Christine Golbreich wrote:
>> The W3C OWL Working Group has considered your comment and has decided that this is a very good suggestion. Therefore,
>> the functional-style syntax will be changed to be fully typed, and this will be reflected in the next version of our documents.
>> Thanks again very much for raising this important issue!
> 
> Full typed syntax is  perhaps a "very" good idea for *implementors*,
> but seems a bad idea from the *user* side, as repetively said, see for
> example my email to the list [1], recalled at the F2F, and my earlier
> reply to this draft (cc to chairs). Unfortunately I did not get any
> feedback.
> Seems also from Michael emails [1] that he did not find it such a
> *very* good idea either, at least from his first reaction "to deny the
> requested change".
> The decision at the F2F to switch back to full typed syntax seems to
> have been taken in big rush, without new arguments except the info
> that "Matthew  won't implement a parser in the OWL API for the untyped
> functional syntax". It is also unclear how this is related to existing
> implementations and  tools.

I think it is not fair to say 'big rush'. What happened is as follows:
we had a long discussion at the f2f, essentially led by Boris' thoughts,
on how to improve the overall structure of the various OWL components,
ie, the functional syntax, its RDF alternative, the various semantics,
etc and to provide a coherent and clearer message on OWL as a whole. The
 flood of LC comments that were confused in that respect clearly needs
an answer and this is what triggered many discussions prior and during
the f2f. The overall 'message' is now described in

http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Document_Overview

and it essentially says that there is a 'generic' OWL that can be
expressed in OWL structures, ie, the UML diagrams, and can have a
functional or RDF syntax representation (that can be serialized on other
concrete syntaxes). This is regardless of which formal semantic system
is used and without any further restrictions that are usually associated
with DL sublanguages. However, as Boris made us discover, this structure
only works if the functional syntax becomes fully typed, too. Otherwise
the message breaks down and we continue to have the messaging mess on
our hands that transpired in the LC calls.

Boris, is my recollection correct?

Ivan

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf