Possible solution to XMLLiteral issue (was Re: [RDFa] rdf:XMLLiteral (was RE: Missing issue on the list: identification of RDFa content))

Mark Birbeck wrote:
> 
> Hi Dan,
> 
> anything, can you comment on whether the problem you foresee would be
> addressed by modifying the parsing model so that either a typed
> literal or a plain literal is created, depending on whether the
> element being parsed has element children or not?
> 

I think we almost missed this in the thread and I wanted to make sure we
give it proper attention. On our RDFa TF call, we discussed with Mark
the XMLLiteral issue and (hopefully I'm not misquoting him) he thinks
that we do have a problem with our current default to XMLLiteral because
we lose our language information. This in fact is a consequence for the
lack of ability in RDF concepts to add language to datatyped literals,
but, nonetheless, we have to deal with it.

Mark proposes something that was thought sometime ago by him and Steven
that in order for us not to lose mark-up, we change the spec so that
parsers can make the decision based on the element's children whether
it's a plain literal or an XMLLiteral.

I like the scenario because it's a double-win. Neither plain literals or
XMLLiterals have to add a datatype property. It's stated by the author
simply by the fact whether she used mark-up or not in the element's content.

I also brought up the point about plain ol' HTML. HTML mark-up content
is not XMLLiteral so I think that's this conditional rule could be of
benefit in allowing documents to switch formats and later on adding a
rule that in HTML there be some sort of HTMLLiteral.

What does everyone think? Any major issues with the approach? We don't
want to decide on the issue until we have input from the community, so
please let us know.

-Elias

Received on Monday, 19 March 2007 14:53:49 UTC