Re: HumanMarkup Reservations

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi Sean,

I think you may be suffering from this" HumanML Thoughts" Thread 
Syndrome that erupted yesterday.

Remember, as I keep trying to point out, VRML/X3D-H-Anim is just one 
small application of HumanML.

It is, however, in its limited frame of reference, INTENSELY, 
followed and worked on, as are the related Scientific and Academic 
(note the two realms are not congruous) efforts related to this area. 
So, because the REALLY BIG SHOW--SIGGRAPH 2001, just ended last 
weekend, there is a heightened interest level. Our Press Release was 
timed, unintentionally, just right to catch ALL of those people--but 
H-Anim and MPEG4 especially since they are fellow standards groups 
working in this area-- AT exactly the right time to push all their 
buttons simultaneously.

PRESTO! Brouhaha. Tempest in a Teapot. Happens every year at this same time.

Another one happens in late February after the Web3D Consortium 
Yearly Symposium. And now that OASIS has jumped into COMDEX, we can 
expect another such blip on our radar screens when that show arrives.

As for the Applications. We actually have too many to focus down on 
one or two narrow ones, but in that context, old son, YOU are in 
charge of about half of the second largest domain, RDF, in our 
baliwick, so the shoe here is really on the wrong foot.

No offense, but it really ought to be you overflowing with too many 
applications to chose from. Us VRMLers just happen to have one that 
has been around a while and is very visible.

Now for my standard disclaimer warning: <joke>Don't make me come over 
there, bub. You won't like it.</joke>

And gee, how do you expect an unborn fetus scarcely out of embryo 
stage to deliver operating applications? I thought you guys were here 
to work on that, not suffer  identity crises about what the darn 
thing is supposed to do. I thought we were here to define and do that.

Okay. Okay. Dad's done for now. But seriously, the same goes for 
Manos. I think you guys are YOUNG. That means impatient. Hell I'm old 
and twice as impatient as you'll every be, and I'm sticking it out. 
And as with you, Manos points out some important things. We do need 
to get straight with the Ontologies effort, but we haven't crossed 
any lines or burned any bridges nor have we gotten out of bounds. We 
do have a lot of work to do.

There is an old saying: Horses for Courses. We are riding a very big 
horse here on a very big course. Widen your focus a bit.  The rest of 
my comments are in context below.

Ciao,
Rex

At 11:34 AM +0100 8/23/01, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>Book your tickets now... no, not those kind of reservations! I mean
>"reservations" in the pejorative sense.
>
>As Manos has pointed out to me, I seem to be stuck on some odd sort of
>"HumanML: emoticons; HumanML: emotions" thing, and it's bugging me. My rule
>of thumb is that if I don't have an application of something running (or
>runnable) on my desktop, then it's not useful. That's why I'm not too keen
>on VRML.
>
>So I seem to be lost out here. Lost in a kind of "well, we'll charter a
>group and work out what it does later" ambience... and somebody needs to
>sort that out quick. Not IMHO; *really*. How do I get this through to
>people? Perhaps it's just that I don't have the HumanML available yet to do
>so :-)
>
>Of course, having said that, HumanML can't and won't be used in plain text,
>any more than people are going to be writing chunks of XHTML. It's not
>going to be used on IRC either; sorry, but real time HumanML isn't going to
>happen unless the interface somewhat kicks-ass.

How about "Interfaces?" Like Modules?

>What I'd like the group to focus on more is useful stuff like managing
>collaborations, trust mechanisms, and the like. Of course, I'm coming at
>this from the RDF angle, so I'm already thinking about trust on the
>Semantic Web and so forth, but there is a great overlap between that and
>HumanMarkup. Do I trust this person? How do I establish that trust?

This is good. In fact, maybe you are running over with app ideas. One 
thought, let it be known that one's trustability is being tracked by 
databases other than the one that holds their identity information? 
something along the lines of  "Pay attention, there will be a quiz 
later."

>Another possible direction is a cultural database deeley, where you could
>look up gestures and so forth, and be able to learn details about cultural
>idioms; useful for business meetings and so forth. I probably wouldn't be
>able to help with that, and it would have very little to do with HumanML,
>but it would be useful all the same.

This is a biggie, and while part of the driver mechanism for H-Anim, 
much larger than 3D apps==going to real world business apps.

>Something else - that Kurt raised - would be establishing mappings from
>SVG+metadata to text using XSLT or whatever. I'm not sure what that has to
>do with "HumanMarkup", but then contrarywise, I'm not sure what
>"HumanMarkup" has to do with anything, so we'd better bend the rules a
>little bit.

No rules to bend yet. Probably better that way.

>Just hide behind a wall when an OASIS official comes, or something.
>
>--
>Kindest Regards,
>Sean B. Palmer
>@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
>:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .
>
>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
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