RDF WG Resolution Regarding Various Forms of String Literals

Hi all,

The RDF working group resolved our ISSUE-12 [1] today, which is intended to "reconcile various forms of string literals".

We resolved to accept the proposal at:
  http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/StringLiterals/AbolishUntaggedPlain
with the modification that preferred output form (SHOULD) is "foo" not "foo"^^xsd:string in RDF; and we recommend that SPARQL and other WGs do the same.

Discussion highlighted several possible areas of concern, which we believe the current proposal addresses.  Specifically, it was noted that:

- The forms "foo" and "foo"^^xsd:string are equivalent input syntaxes.
- The form "foo" is the preferred output syntax.
- The WG suggests retaining the term "plain literal" in documents to avoid unnecessary rework.  Such plain literals would be considered semantically equivalent to xsd:strings.

NB: This resolution makes *no statement* about language-tagged literals (e.g. "foo"@en).

We invite discussion regarding the ramifications of this resolution to other working groups and implementors.

Regards,
Dave

[1] http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/12

Received on Wednesday, 15 June 2011 16:40:02 UTC