RE: SUO: RE: Topic Maps
Dear John,
As far as I can see we are in violent agreement :-)
Regards
Matthew
============================================
Matthew West
Operations & Asset Management
Shell Services International
H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929
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E-mail: Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com
http://www.shellservices.com/
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: 17 February 2001 01:22
> To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: SUO: RE: Topic Maps
>
>
>
> Matthew,
>
> As I said in another note, I am not arguing for any particular
> notation for logic. What I am arguing for is just logic.
MW: I'm not arguing against it.
>
> >Topic Maps only provides a structuring and linking
> capability - precisely
> >what KIF doesn't have.
>
> There are many things that KIF doesn't have. I regard it as
> the "assembly language" of knowledge representation, and there
> is a very big need for many different kinds of higher-level
> notations that can and should be built on top of KIF.
MW: I quite agree.
> My own
> work on CGs is designed to provide other features that can
> highlight structures that can be expressed in KIF, but not
> as clearly as in a graph notation.
>
> The "structuring and linking" of Topic Maps is also very
> important. But as I said, it can be mapped into logic, and
> therefore into KIF, CGs, controlled English, and many other
> notations. I would just like to see that mapping made more
> explicit (most people might not want to see the mapping, but
> it should be available to anyone who wants to see it).
MW: At the moment this would be a 2 stage process. There is a "conceptual
model" for Topic Maps as part of the XTM work. This is an entity
relationship model for which there would be a straightforward translation
into FOL.
>
> Another notation, which I like very much for expressing
> procedural knowledge, is Petri nets (a watered-down version
> of which is called "activity nets" in UML).
MW: Yes - I am a fan of Petri Nets too.
> In my KR book,
> I showed how Petri nets could be translated to logic, in either
> KIF or CG notation. That translation, which was much less
> readable than the original P-net form, demonstrated very
> clearly why multiple notations are extremely valuable for many
> purposes.
MW: Yes, I've read it. I agree strongly that KIF makes a good "assembler"
into which higher level (formal) languages can be "compiled" and defined.
>
> And by the way, my major complaint about UML (which I also
> mention in my KR book) is that
>
> 1. UML is a collection of notations that are definable on top
> of logic, but the UML developers are afraid that if they
> emphasize that point they might scare away people who think
> that they don't like logic.
>
> 2. They limit themselves to only 6 different notations. I
> would prefer to see a more general version of UML, which
> was firmly grounded in logic and which supported an open
> ended (possibly infinite number) of different notations,
> all of which would map to a common underlying logic.
MW: Well they do have OCL (Object Constraint Language (?))
>
> >1. Topic Maps can help us to organise our KIF theories -
> manage the network
>
> >for us. All we get with KIF is something monolithic.
> >
> >2. If we are going to get the SUO used, we need to make it easily
> >accessible. We could aid this with the use of Topic Maps.
>
> I have no quarrel with those points.
MW: I was not trying to make any other.
>
> >What is being suggested has nothing to do with how the
> ontology is defined.
>
> >There is an issue that KIF is unintelligible to all but a
> few cognoscenti,
>
> >but that is not what is addressed here.
>
> I completely agree. That is why I strongly recommended
> the development of some version of controlled English (and
> other NLs) as a higher-level, more readable supplement to KIF.
MW: Me too. I will get to it some day (I have already made a few informal
attempts). I have in mind something that is natural enough that a computer
programmer would find it straightforward, but something that might fall
short of conforming to English grammar.
>
> John Sowa
>