[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>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.
I have to admit I haven't really looked at any XML parsing source, but I would tend to believe the parser hidden behind that one line of code is at least as big and complex as Jess' parser. I was getting at more the initial development argument---it's not so much harder to parse KIF that there couldn't have been or be a huge set of tools for parsing it like there is for XML. However, I do see your point that XML has a tremendously larger user and tool base than KIF ever did, and agree that it's no small thing. One of the projects I'm currently on uses KIF and it's hard to work with the source ontology directly as there are effectively no ready-made tools with which to manipulate it. I think most of my arguably antagonistic questioning of XML proponents comes from a disappointment that the development of such a "standard" isn't ancient history as well as a backlash against the extreme hype being generated from all corners. In some sense, XML is sort of trivial. You could scribble the basics down in a few minutes on a napkin, be done with it, and move on to real work. The hard part is getting everyone to agree to it and start using it, but that's all politics, not the technological masterpiece that I think it's sometimes heralded as. I've got mostly the same attitude towards DAML/OWL: It's an interesting project, arguably very useful, and woefully underutilized (I don't see many projects as using it well), but in the end it's sort of a stock result from description logics with a neat syntax and not the magic bullet it's hyped up to be. Maybe the W3C/web/non-KR people are more guilty of this than the people with deeper roots in knowledge representation, but I feel the languages are advertised as being more capable than they are. They're portrayed as mechanisms for completely and utterly defining some domain without acknowledging that: - they're description logics, so there's a lot of very simple things that can't be expressed in the language and thus can't be completely defined - in the extreme general case you can't guarantee absolute translation as you can't guarantee the conversants' universes of objects contain the same things; that doesn't really say much for practical purposes, but it does mean you can't have an _absolute_ solution - in practice so far they've been poorly used and the "ontologies" being put forth mean and are used as little more than weak class hierarchy diagrams I guess I just have a severe dislike for excessive hype (despite realizing that it's arguably neccesary to get lots of people interested). But, I definitely see your point about it just being time for XML whereas it wasn't time for KIF, and agree that it's excellent that because of that there are so many more opportunities. -- - joe kopena -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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] --------------------------------------------------------------------
