Semantic-based linking

[David Jeske]

The idea of semantic based linking (IMO) is that we have something in
place which tries to understand the actual 'funtional item' a program
wanted to use based on more than just a name. It's true that one
simple 'machine oriented method' is to use a GUID. It's certainly a
simple solution.

However, in response to your quandry below, there is no 'infinite
recursion problem'. Consider two humans talking to eachother so that
one can ask for something the other has. They begin to converse, they
are either talking the same language or not. If they are talking the
same language, then one starts to describe the item he wants given his
vocabulary. The other is going to interpret those words in his own
way, and eventually produce some item. If it's not the right item, the
requester will elaborate using simpler vocabulary to describe exactly
what it is he wants. If they don't speak the same language, they might
resort to hand gestures, or one of them might go find a translator who
can relate their sentences to eachother. 

In my opinion, this relates to computers in that we would have the
system try to understand some of the different ways in which a
function's purpose could be specified. Early on that might be a guid,
because it's simple and easy. However, later on, someone might come up
with a purpose specification language, or eventually, we might just
use english to specify what the function does. In any case, the system
is trying to map a semantic request with a provider, not just blindly
connecting two symbol names together. 

On Sun, Jan 03, 1999 at 01:00:04PM +0100, Laurent Martelli wrote:
> I fond this notion semantic-based linking very interesting. I've been
> thinking about the problem of equality of information that arises when
> two systems want to communicate. I think that the problem of equality
> of 'procedure' that you're talking about is just a special of the one
> of equality of information, because procedures and code are just data
> used by a machine that interprets them.
> 
> But let's examine the semantic-based linking a litlle bit closer. The
> specification of the function is itself information that has to be
> transmitted between two instances of the system. If we apply the same
> principle for the transmition of the specifications, we should
> transmit an abstract representation of the specification, which itself
> is some pieces of information. Obviously, we need to stop the
> recursion sometime before the sun dies. 
> 
> And I don't how to do this whithout having some guid somewhere. The
> protocole of communication between instances of the systems should
> specifiy some guids for some objects. And the objects that have a guid
> form the minimal system. And each instance of the system should have
> at least those objects so that they can communicate with each other. 

-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net