I think Joe Kopena wrote: I'm really enjoying this discussion.
> ... Certainly I don't buy that > everyone's interested in XML because they want to embed the stuff into > webpages, as Semantic Web people would put forth as a pro-XML > argument. Well, yes and no. XSLT is really awfully nice, once you're used to it, and transforming to HTML is one neat feture you get for free with any XML-based format. > The parsing argument doesn't really fly for me either; LISP/KIF-styled > languages (as Jess clearly is, unless ejfried objects) are almost > inarguably easier to parse than XML documents No, not really. It's hard to beat Document doc = documentBuilder.parse(new InputSource(reader)); and then you have the whole DOM apparatus at your disposal. Jess's parser is > 1600 lines of code. > and the quantitave > argument that there are more XML parsers than KIFish parsers is weak in > light of qualitative advantages (to my mind at least). > I think XML has gotten to where it is precisely because of a neat toolset, multivendor tool support, a strong standards group, and tremendous portability. I used to do some KQML and KIF stuff back in the day. The only KQML/KIF library that was available was the one from Stanford, and although it was a perfectly nice piece of software for its time, it suffered from the typical problems that plagued much code back then. It was very decidedly UNIX-y, and this made it hard to use on Macs and Windows machines. OTOH, XML tools written in Java work anywhere with no fuss. Toolwise, there was never an XSLT equivalent for KIF -- a powerful, easy to use transformation language is the one thing that makes XML such a useful format in my eyes. I think there were KQML/KIF GUI tools using Tcl/Tk (or I wrote them, I forget now!) but Tcl/Tk, lovely as it is, again isn't as portable or powerful as Java. > My concern stems from core skepticisms in some of my own Semantic-Web > related work, which in part comes down to: Why XML (and RDF & DAML, etc) > now and not KIF (and subsets of KIF) 20 years ago? To make it more on > topic, why not a subset of KIF to exchange rules instead of RuleML? My theory is that KIF, in the absence of tools and multivendor support, was just too hard to use to achieve the critical mass that XML has. I think it could have worked, but the time just wasn't right yet. The XML community is truly vast, and simply dwarves the peak size of the KIF community. With that kind of manpower, there are bound to be a lot of useful bits and pieces to draw on. > Is there a substantial argument there, or is it just the result of a > large group of people (eg: W3C) realizing the power of knowledge > representation and insisting on using their own formats instead of > established mechanisms (ironically, not following standards)? I think there is certainly some grain of truth to this; the W3C has done some tremendous work, but there's a touch of the not-invented-here syndrome to some of what they do. But I also think that the rule-language people (especially the DAML folks) are quite aware of, and have learned from, KIF; their goal is to continue the tradition and go farther. --------------------------------------------------------- Ernest Friedman-Hill Distributed Systems Research Phone: (925) 294-2154 Sandia National Labs FAX: (925) 294-2234 Org. 8920, MS 9012 [EMAIL PROTECTED] PO Box 969 http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov Livermore, CA 94550 -------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users [EMAIL PROTECTED]' in the BODY of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
