RE: [xml-dev] ANN: White Paper - "Using OWL to Avoid SyntacticRig or Mortis"

Simon St.Laurent <> wrote:

>  (Uche Ogbuji) writes:
> >> There is - or should be - a lot of room for markup applications 
> >> without the "Knowledge Technology" claims piling on.
> >
> >To be fair there is - or should be - a lot of room for data 
> processing
> >applications without the markup claims piling on.
> 
> If you're going to use markup, you need to think about 
> markup.  If you're doing data processing and don't give a 
> damn about markup, there's probably something better than 
> markup out there you should be using.
> 
> I'm not using knowledge technologies, so I don't feel 
> obligated to think about them.  If I start working in OWL or 
> anything heavy-duty in RDF, I'd feel obligated.  
> 
> The kinds of labels used in XML don't require such theory, 
> IMHO.  While it's helpful to understand the relational 
> calculus to normalize data for storage in relational 
> databases, there's also a level where you can do 
> normalization (I call it "information demolition") without 
> ever getting into the calculus.
> 
> Hell, I don't think we've begun to figure out what we can do 
> with the syntax.  Rushing forward into semantic theory seems 
> really premature.

If you're not going to have semantics then why do you need syntax ?