Re: Usage of language tags in SKOS

Unfortunately, they do the same in the SKOS proposed recommendation:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/PR-skos-reference-20090615/#L2655
So this seems to need some action ASAP from our side - agenda+ for the next
call.

Felix

2009/6/23 "Martin J. Dürst" <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp>

> I very much agree with Felix on this. Something like
>   skos:prefLabel "FRA"@en-x-notation-threeletter
> is totally weird. Just because RDF does allow to tag strings with languages
> doesn't mean that this should be misused for anything and everything. RDF
> also has typing, and typing would be much more appropriate.
>
> [As shepherd of 4646bis, I just was telling the responsible AD (who was
> thinking about going as far as disallowing them) that use of private use
> tags for language tags is very infrequent. So much for that :-(]
>
> Regards,   Martin.
>
>
>
> On 2009/06/23 6:55, Felix Sasaki wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> looking at
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-skos-primer-20090615/#secnotations
>> I am wondering if SKOS recommends the usage of language tags in an
>> appropriate manner. I am not sure about this passage:
>>
>> [
>> However, the management of such datatypes can be cumbersome. Further, the
>> previous pattern is not really needed when publishers consider the
>> notations
>> themselves to be simple language-independent labels. In such cases, it is
>> possible to use one SKOS labeling property, for instance skos:prefLabel,
>> in
>> combination with private use language tags (or subtags) as defined by RFC
>> 4646 [RFC4646]. This pattern was first proposed for a list of coded
>> countries [COUNTRYCODES-SKOS] from which the following example is adapted:
>> iso3166:FR skos:prefLabel "France"@en ;
>>   skos:prefLabel "FRA"@en-x-notation-threeletter ;
>>   skos:prefLabel "250"@x-notation-numerical.
>> ]
>>
>> First, private use language tags are recommended to be used for a
>> "language-independent-label", which seems to be a contradiction in itself.
>> Second, the labels are used for specifying the language of notations as
>> part
>> of e.g. classifications. Notations for classifications are not natural
>> language, but rather closer to identifiers in programming languages, so it
>> seems to me that usage of language tags is not appropriate for this
>> purpose.
>> Any comments?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Felix
>>
>>
> --
> #-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
> #-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp
>