Re: &

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Please stand back up and keep contributing. Consensus requires participation.

But, tomorrow sometime. I'm too pooped right now.

Ciao,
Rex

At 8:11 PM -0700 8/25/01, Kurt Cagle wrote:
>I am wondering if it might be worth taking a page from Paul Cotton's group
>over at W3 XML Query, in light of both Sean and Rex's comments. The first
>step that the group did was to not even worry about a formal XML Schema per
>se, but rather to create a formal algebra for describing the space of
>queries, then once this algebra was complete to create both XML and non-XML
>implementations of the algebra. I talked with Paul at some length about why
>they took this approach and he replied that there were any number of
>different ideas for what each person wanted to have in the taxonomy but,
>primarily because of the fairly strongly distrustful environment -- nobody
>wanted to give up a point that would have been disadvantagous for their
>business, even if it had benefits over-all, it was much more feasible to
>explore what XML query was supposed to in a rigorous formalism, then address
>one or more potential implementations once the algebra had been agreed to.
>
>We're all trying to get a feel for what we think this should do; but are
>letting our own preconceived notions get in the way. I, for instance,
>believe that emotion description, while a useful capability, should not in
>fact be a part of the core of HumanML, but should in fact be a module. My
>reasoning for it is very simple -- look at the potential applications of
>HumanML that have been laid out thus far. One of the most critical is as an
>open source alternative to Passport, which is fundamentally an identity
>schema. Passport has its roots in vCard, which Microsoft used as a means to
>store business card information in Outlook. I think the structure of
>Passport and vCard are both flawed, in great part because they were designed
>in a very ad hoc fashion for easy access by certain Microsoft Office
>products, not as a means to build a large, comprehensive framework of human
>description or endeavor.
>
>It seems reasonable to me to see an identity schema as a core, build an
>extension mechanism into the schema early on, then start treating such
>things as emotions, presence, preferences, etc., as first tier extensions.
>We can employ a number of consistent conventions throughout -- the use of a
>0 to 1 based intensity indicator, for instance, create a limited set of
>attributes for handling structural interconnection information, choose a
>specific set of nomenclature conventions, etc., but these are for the most
>part stylistic issues.
>
>I think we also have to be careful of discerning what is in the domain of
>HumanML and what is not. Musicology is a fascinating area of discussion, but
>is it something that specifically needs to be a part of HumanML? If it is,
>then we should allocate an extension for building off of the core schema,
>perhaps in an inheritance relationship of some sort:
>
>class Musicology inherits HumanML {foobar}
>
>or
>
>class Musicology extends HumanML {foobar}
>
>I know I'm bucking some of the work that has been done earlier, but my sense
>of the direction of things at the moment is that we are trying to work at
>too high a level. Just my two cents worth, and as I've said before, I'm
>still trying to come to grips with the fairly significant amount of work
>that has been done thus far. If we weren't, I honestly don't believe that
>we'd be having these big exhortations about taxonomies of taxonomies, common
>classes, and so forth. Just my two cents worth. I'll sit down and be quiet
>now <grin/>.
>
>-- Kurt
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Rex Brooks" <rexb@starbourne.com>
>To: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>;
><humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org>
>Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 6:49 PM
>Subject: Re: &
>
>
>>  I think any initiative is onto something when it draws the kind of
>>  ridicule you mention. There will always be these people, as there
>>  always have been. The world is flat and bumblebees and men can't fly.
>  >
>>  Ciao,
>>  Rex
>>
>>  P.S. I think that the best way to answer criticism is simply to carry
>>  on with the work, get it done and move on.
>>
>>  At 2:15 AM +0100 8/26/01, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>>  >"Odd" was the word I was probably looking for. Whatever the post was, the
>>  >word was "odd".
>>  >
>>  >Len has been careful to explain to use the dangers in confuddling the
>>  >idioms, concepts, and abstract mechanisms that HumanMarkup introduces and
>>  >explores, with the HumanML interpretations, the instances, the class
>>  >diagrams, and the ambient technologies. But just as human communication
>is
>>  >really only defined in every exchange of soul between two beings, so the
>>  >wonders of HumanMarkup will become manifest in the information space in
>>  >which we work.
>>  >
>>  >I find it hard to imagine such a project being conceived five years ago.
>No
>>  >Semantic Web technologies, XML in its absolute infancy, metadata folk
>still
>>  >arguing about what it means to title a book (well, they still are, we've
>>  >just learned to ignore them now), and so on. So I suggest that the "The
>>  >Source Code is the Specification" slogan applies, with all its
>>  >philosophical background, to HumanMarkup. I can't imagine how it could be
>>  >any other way. If we induldge ourselves in little "XML Schema vs. RELAXNG
>>  >vs. Schematron" debates, I think we can be forgiven.
>>  >
>>  >Keeping that in mind, I had an epiphany minora, in reading a fairly poor
>>  >article about HumanML [1] - Jim Dunn's "Ghost in the Machine" on iSource.
>>  >XML tree structures are 1.n dimensional, but communication modes aren't.
>>  >XML is no more useful to human communication than a condom is to a
>>  >Catholic. [I applaud those of you who are singing a certain Monty Python
>>  >song at this moment.] So it's lucky that we're not building XML here, or
>>  >even an XML language. We're building something less tangiable, but no
>less
>>  >exciting: we're building a way of going about things, Kurt Cagle's
>>  >prophetic "taxonomy for taxonomies", Rex's insightful "*common*
>packages",
>>  >Manos' wonderous "roots of the ontology tree" that we're not even going
>to
>>  >charge for. My conclusion: the term "Markup/M" in "HumanMarkup/HumanML"
>is
>>  >a terrible, and indeed damaging, misnomer.
>>  >
>>  >Consider the negative feedback that this group has recieved so far.
>>  >Emotions embedded in XML? Absurd, rediculous, laughable, and all the rest
>>  >of it. Consider the (actually pretty good) internet.com article entitled
>>  >"Working on a Unified Code for 'LOL' or :)" [2]. People must think that
>>  >we're a bunch of fucking idiots, or something. Lately, I have seen an
>>  >interesting reversal in this trend towards absurdity: mainly on this
>list,
>>  >so perhaps I'm not looking hard enough, but people are starting to "get"
>>  >HumanMarkup, and once again, I submit that the only thing to "get" about
>>  >HumanMarkup is that there is no markup.
>>  >
>>  >Or is there? Now we get back to my little opening speech. The "taxonomy
>of
>>  >taxonomies" *has* to become manifest in markup. The problem is that I
>>  >believe that the richness of the human communicative modes are too
>>  >wide-ranging to simply write out into a little graph and say, "here you
>>  >go". We're going to be coming up with idioms that require languages more
>>  >akin to OOP to do anything with. Functions cannot be embedded in XML.
>They
>>  >can be represented, but not embedded. n-ary (not 3) relationships can't
>be
>>  >embedded in RDF. They can be modelled very efficently, but not expressed
>>  >as-is. I remember a posting from Pat Hayes on the www-rdf-logic list
>about
>>  >that some while ago, but can't be bothered to research the URI. I'll
>leave
>>  >that as a task left to the interested reader.
>>  >
>>  >Which brings me to the next step in this little cavalcade of whimsy: the
>>  >hang up between documents and data. People are (aaargh!) thinking about
>>  >HumanML from a document standpoint. People on this list do the same
>thing,
>>  >perhaps jokingly. Ranjeeth just did it, a few posts ago:-
>>  >
>>  >[[[
>>  ><suggestion>
>>  >Maybe we should eat our words, and write all our replies in XML.
>>  >Is this explicit enough?   </wink></smile>
>  > ></suggestion>
>>  >]]]
>>  >From: "Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga" <rkthunga@humanmarkup.org>
>>  >To: <humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org>
>>  >Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 8:26 PM
>>  >Subject: Re: Brass Tacks #3
>>  >
>>  >He was joking (given by the fact that his XML wasn't even well-formed...
>>  ></wink> indeed; is that supposed to be a new form of empty tag, or
>what?),
>>  >but others aren't. We need to dispell these myths right away: HumanML can
>>  >add no more value to XML than a few well placed words can. Indeed, to a
>>  >skilled writer, HumanML embedded in documentation could be a hinderance
>>  >rather than an advantage. XML is not magical; elements are only different
>>  >from words in that they can delimit sections. Stop thinking in terms of
>>  >documentation and elements, and think in terms of complex and cohesive
>data
>>  >structures, manifest in huge databases of knowledge. Note how I'm
>avioding
>>  >using the term "Semantic Web" here, but that would be the gist of it, if
>>  >there weren't an unbelievable amount of odd baggage attached to that term
>>  >too. Aha, "odd".
>>  >
>>  >So, what do I want? I want people to be very clear on what HumanMarkup is
>>  >and represents. It's not a human, and it's not markup :-) I want people
>to
>>  >have no stupid delusions about what XML can and cannot do. XML can do
>>  >anything that any language can do, just not very efficiently [3]. I think
>>  >that the goal of HumanMarkup is to investigate just how far we can push
>it.
>>  >That's no easy task, and perhaps I've been a bit too expectant in
>thinking
>>  >that we'd develop any useful implementations. Perhaps we won't. That
>isn't
>>  >the issue: the issue is that we're all here, working on this, learning,
>>  >contributing, experimenting, and pooling resources. The greatest threat
>to
>>  >that isn't that we don't produce any useful implementations, and that
>>  >hasn't really been my point. It's that if HumanMarkup loses its *way*,
>then
>>  >it becomes pointless. Implementations are just a measure of sticking to a
>>  >particular path.
>>  >
>>  >The greatest threat to HumanMarkup is misunderstanding, which is the
>>  >epitome of ironic, given that the goal of HumanMarkup is to reduce human
>>  >misunderstanding by increasing understanding. Now, you see this one-eyed
>>  >midget, shouting the word "now". And you say, "for what reason?", and
>says
>>  >"how?". And you say, "what does this mean?", and he screams back, "you're
>a
>>  >cow. Give me some milk, or else go home."
>>  >
>>  >Ah yes, "odd".
>>  >
>>  >[1] http://www.isourceonline.com/article.asp?article_id=1617
>>  >[2] http://www.internetnews.com/wd-news/article/0,,10_870221,00.html
>>  >[3] You think I'm joking? XSLT is Turing Complete, so XML has the same
>>  >amount of processing power as any computer language will *ever* be able
>to
>>  >do, by conventional logic. But the turing completeness test is a pile of
>>  >rubbish, because it's very difficult to write Turing programs; viz. it's
>>  >difficult to get any level of abstraction to deal with what's going on.
>>  >
>>  >--
>>  >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
>>  Tel: 510-849-2309
>>  Fax: By Request
>>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request