[Person-ontology] KIF vs. CLIF

[Pat Hayes]

>Pat,
>
>	How easy would it be to transcribe KIF into CLIF?

The full grammar of KIF includes many constructions that are rarely, 
if ever, used (certainly not by SUMO) so let me distinguish 'full 
KIF' from 'everyday KIF'. Transcribing Full KIF into CLIF is possible 
but awkward in places. Transcribing everyday KIF into CLIF is easy, 
in most cases just a matter of minor syntactic substitutions. The 
only slighly nontrivial issue is the need to re-write the KIF 
'definition' patterns.
>
>	Are we really talking about transcribing a given ontology from
>KIF to CLIF, or could a translator be created to convert any KIF
>ontology into CLIF?

A language translator for any ontology. Any everyday ontology and 
most of the Full (To do a complete job on the Full would require 
writing a lot of applied KIF ontologies into CLIF using the same 
identifiers, which hasn't been done yet.) CLIF was deliberately 
designed to be a kind of 'son of KIF'.

>	How much is each in use today?  Which is gaining more momentum?

CLIF (CL generally) is new, so has little established use so far, but 
this will likely change. Many government agencies in particular are 
very keen to use ISO standards where possible, so there will be 
pressure to use CL rather than KIF in funded projects. Also, frankly, 
CL is just better thought through and more developed than KIF, has a 
fully stated model theory, better worked out proof theory, and is 
much more web-compatible than KIF (for example, a URI can be used 
directly as a CLIF identifier, which is impossible in KIF.)

Pat

>
>	Thanks for your continued invaluable insight.
>
>Jim Schoening
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Pat Hayes [mailto:phayes at ihmc.us]
>Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 11:02 AM
>To: Schoening, James R Mr CIV USA AMC
>Cc: person-ontology at idcommons.net
>Subject: Re: [Person-ontology] KIF
>
>>All,
>>
>>	Higgins Project leaders are interested in learning more about
>KIF,
>>about applications and usage practicies for it.  (SUMO is written in
>>KIF.)  They are concerned with the cost and schedule of migrating to
>>KIF from their current customized version of OWL.
>>
>>	Could we share our knowledge and opinions on KIF.  Thanks.
>
>First suggestion is to use CLIF, which is a KIF-like 'official' dialect
>of the new ISO 24707 Common Logic standard. CLIF is simpler than KIF and
>much more Web-compatible, as well as having achieved the standardization
>status which KIF never achieved. It is easy to transcribe KIF into CLIF.
>There is also a standard embedding of OWL/RDF into CLIF which could be
>easily mechanized, though I don't know if anyone has written a
>mechanical translator yet. Common Logic also has an XML syntax (XCL)
>which might be useful.
>
>Pat
>
>>
>>Jim Schoening
>>_______________________________________________
>>Person-ontology mailing list
>>Person-ontology at idcommons.net
>>http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/person-ontology
>
>
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40 South Alcaniz St.	(850)202 4416   office
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FL 32502			(850)291 0667    cell
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes