RE: &

["Emmanuil M. Batsis" <mbatsis@humanmarkup.org>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kurt Cagle [mailto:cagle@olywa.net]

> 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?

I think not. Of course, the way I see it, a "musicology" module would pe a presentetional
module, not a "knowledge" one. Thus IMHO fals into something a HumanML adopter might wanna
geti into but that's just it.


> 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.

Agreed. But isn;t this what we are trying to achieve? Work out the low level model for an
adopter to be taking it as transparent, unless he wants to mess with it. Theoretically we
are doing fine on this higher level... but things are far more complicated.

For example, we are talking about a future taxonomy framework. Under what model will this
be constructed and structured? What mechanisms should we use? How are we going to register
class/topic relationships? Are going to create RDF extensions to use for
building/proccessing this model (meaning the taxonomies)? If we  do, we will have to study
what's available first. And of course, there are some considerations that will have to be
treated seriously. For starters, to solve the above problems, we will have to study
current approaches and available technology. And we also have to keep interoperability in
mind.

The way I see it, the taxonomy framework will surelly use the following technologies as a
base: RDF(S), XML namespaces, XLink(RDDL?). RDF(S) for the classes/metadata, XML
namespaces to organise it and make it usefull (i really had underestimated namespaces in
the past) and XLink to provide additional/relative/alternative resources. Just a note:
latelly, I have abandoned the idea of using XML instead of RDF because of RDF's well
defined model (or graph if you preffer, please check [1] if you don't know what I'm
talking about).
Other XML technologies/initiatives involved in this knowledge over the web thingy are XML
Topic Maps (XTM)[2], DARPA's DAML+OIL[3] and others I may have no clue about.
There's also the W3C Web Ontology group (this will get public in a few months, they'll use
DAML+OIL as a base).

What I want to get to is, we should really take this slowly. We have some great ideas and
perspectives, but we can't just rush it. We will have to study what is available to decide
the basis of our framework (because that's where we are heading to, a framework not a
language) and then build upon it.

Maybe Sean could give us a clue or two, about how DAML+OIL extensions could help us at
this point. I would also like to refine the namespaces framework, as it will be used by
machines to understand what a document is about (via RDFS). I also suspect that the RDF
Schemata repository will get so big and the that local schema use will have to be
promoted, by establishing an automated versioning/mirroring system. Maybe I'm wrong on
this though.

> 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.

That's what we all have to do, meaning third party work.

> I'll sit down and be quiet
> now <grin/>.

Please don't!

[1] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/RDF-XML.html
[2] http://www.topicmaps.org
[3] http://www.daml.org/

Kindest regards,

Manos