RE: SUO: RE: Simplified/Controlled English
John's note is a good summary of my own feelings on the issue.
Pat Cassidy
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org]On Behalf Of
> John F. Sowa
> Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 11:48 AM
> To: Horn, Graham; 'sowa@bestweb.net'; mfu@redwood.rt.cs.boeing.com;
> mcdavid@us.ibm.com; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: SUO: RE: Simplified/Controlled English
>
>
>
> Graham,
>
> In my messages, I am trying to walk a narrow line between
> the advocates and sceptics. On the one hand, I am advocating
> a version of controlled NL as an auxiliary tool to make the
> formal language, such as whatever SUO-KIF may become, more
> readable and more palatable to a wider audience.
>
> On the other hand, I am trying to point out the very serious
> R & D problems involved in going too far beyond what has been
> accomplished with the NL query systems that map to SQL and
> the controlled English systems such as ACE.
>
> >I don't know yet whether you see that as being enough for
> >the precise machine interpretability I am seeking, which
> would enable >such
> a
> >SUO-CE to actually replace the dpANS KIF based SUO-KIF in
> all >functions.
>
>
> There are several points I would like to make:
>
> 1. ACE does not yet support all of the features that are
> expressible in KIF. However, I believe that it is possible
> with current technology to design a grammar for SUO-CE that
> will provide fairly readable expressions for each and every
> feature that is expressed in SUO-CE.
>
> 2. However, I definitely would not recommend SUO-CE as a
> replacement for SUO-KIF. I would insist on publishing
> all formal definitions and axioms in a bilingual form
> with SUO-KIF and SUO-CE on facing pages or columns.
> For tutorials, introductions, and summaries, SUO-CE
> might be the primary notation, but I would still insist
> on SUO-KIF as the definitive version in case of any
> disputes about which is "correct".
>
> 3. One of the main reasons why I would not use SUO-CE as
> the primary notation is that I expect it to be a moving
> target that will continue to improve in readability and
> ease of use. The initial version is not likely to be
> much less clumsy than some of the ACE expressions (which
> are not bad compared to what many people write in their
> e-mails). But there is a great deal of room for further
> improvement, and I don't believe that such a moving target
> is suitable as the definitive language for an ontology
> standard.
>
> John Sowa
>
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