[Sigia-l] What is the "Semantic Web"?

[Jon Hanna]

> Calling it "Semantic" is a bit of a misnomer since machines cannot
> understand meaning.

They can't understand anything other than 1 and 0.
They can act as if they understand meaning - in particular in extracting
entailed or even inferred information from information presented

 There really is no such thing as "semantic html". The
> term "semantic html" usually refers to html that is "well formed" and
> conforms to a w3c standard, usually xhtml 1.0 loose, transitional, or
> strict. 

"Semantic HTML" refers to those elements of HTML that reflect meaning (em, h1,
blockquote, cite) as opposed to those elements that indicate a styling
suggestion (b, font) or which abuse elements because of the commonly applied
styling (blockquote as a mechanism for indentation).

Semantic HTML is still a weaker semantic than much sem-web research strives
towards.

-- 
Jon Hanna
<http://www.hackcraft.net/>
"
it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for
equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt