[Attempto] data properties

[Tobias Kuhn]

Hi Ken,

That sounds exciting!

Even though you say that you would also contribute if the code wasn't hosted on a public repository, 
I feel that such a public repository would be easier to manage. I got some more feedback and 
altogether this makes me confident that putting the AceWiki code onto a repository like SourceForge 
is a good idea.

Besides SourceForge, I am also considering Google Code and Launchpad. Let me know if anyone of you 
has certain preferences.


Cheers,
Tobias


On 23.12.09 12:57, Kenneth Jones wrote:
> Not only would I be willing to contribute, but I am actually working
> right now on some code that I plan to offer to the Attempto group.  It
> doesn't matter to me whether the code is hosted on the Attempto site or
> on SourceForge.
>
> My current focus is on developing a platform for the average programmer
> without a CS degree and for non-programmer scientists, engineers, and
> business analysts who are able to express their needs in declarative
> form, can handle concepts like transitivity, and are reasonably good at
> making and understanding valid deductions.  In other words, I am
> targeting an audience that is a bit more comfortable dealing with
> reasonably simple formal systems (though they may not think of them as
> "formal systems") than the current target audience of AceWiki.  They
> would only need to be capable of informal logical deduction and would
> need no knowledge or programming, formal logics, tractability,
> linguistics, etc.
>
> To this end I have developed a partial implementation of a parser
> (implemented in Java) for the Prolog-based textual representation of
> Attempto DRS version 6.5 that converts the text into a parse tree of
> Java objects.  I have also partially completed Java code that converts
> the parse tree into an "abstract syntax network" of sorts that consists
> of the graph of Java objects that results from resolving all the textual
> references in the DRS into links in the network (edges in the graph are
> implemented as field references between the Java objects that form the
> nodes of the network).  I am beginning work on a transformation from the
> abstract syntax graph to Java code that performs inferences based on the
> structure of the DRS.  Simple Java function calls will be used to query
> the system.  I also hope to develop a simulation capability that can be
> used prior to code generation.
>
> In the beginning I envision three applications.  Users would start with
> an Ace Editor-based app that provides predictive editing and Java-based
> question answering.  After learning basic ACE the user would be able to
> move to the more powerful capabilities of an APE-based app that provides
> neither predictive editing nor inference capabilities, but allows a
> higher level of expressibility, or to an AceWiki-based app that trades
> expressibility for tractability, uses OWL and a DL reasoner, and
> provides all the extras that AceWiki has to offer.  Eventually I would
> like to see a spectrum of apps or an integrated system with a spectrum
> of capabilities, allowing the user to trade expressibility for
> inferential capabilities and computational complexity.
>
> This is a very ambitious plan and the devil is in the details.  I am not
> sure all my ideas will pan out and the time I have available for working
> on this project is limited, but I am spending virtually all my free time
> on it.  If I am able to develop anything that the Attempto group would
> find useful I would be happy to contribute it.  I would also be open to
> working on other Attempto-related projects.
>
> -- Ken
>
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 3:10 AM, Tobias Kuhn <t.kuhn at gmx.ch
> <mailto:t.kuhn at gmx.ch>> wrote:
>
>     Ken,
>
>     Agreed! I put it to the top of my todo list. (But it is not an easy
>     change, since it requires significant changes in the grammar and
>     probably also in the predictive editor.)
>
>     I will be abroad for the first half of 2010, however, and I won't be
>     able to work on AceWiki all the time. In my view, the best situation
>     would be if a small "AceWiki community" emerged so that I could
>     outsource part of the AceWiki development work into the community.
>     See my SourceForge suggestion in the other message.
>
>     Maybe it's a good moment to ask: Who would be able and willing to
>     contribute to a public AceWiki code base, and thereby becoming a
>     member of a new AceWiki community?
>
>
>     Cheers,
>     Tobias
>
>
>
>
>     On 22.12.09 05:37, Kenneth Jones wrote:
>
>         Tobias,
>
>         I would just like to follow up on George's question about OWL data
>         properties by stating that I would like to see support for
>         strings and
>         numbers moved to the top of your list of priorities.  Numerical
>         data is
>         an essential element of most scientific, engineering, and business
>         domains and string handling is an important part of many business
>         applications.  I think that support for numbers is more
>         important than
>         support for strings, but I am guessing that developing support for
>         strings would be so similar to developing support for numbers that
>         developing support for both would require only a small amount of
>         additional effort after support for one had been implemented.  I
>         think
>         data property support is a fundamental requirement for a number of
>         real-world domains and I would like to see AceWiki's capabilities
>         extended in ways that will make it a viable platform for a wider
>         range
>         of applications.
>
>         -- Ken
>
>
>
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