Re: RDFON: a new RDF serialization

Garret Wilson wrote:
>    vcard.bday:@1980-01-01,
>    eg.married:true,
>    eg.childCount:123,
>    eg.custom:eg.datatype("value")
>
> Just so you know, I used a few RDFON shortcuts for xsd:date, 
> xsd:boolean, and xsd:integer. Those could have been the equivalent 
> full form:
>
>    vcard.bday:xsd.date("1980-01-01"),
>    eg.married:xsd.boolean("true"),
>    eg.childCount:xsd:integer("123"),

And for completeness, the standalone string value "stuff" is the short 
form of xsd:string("stuff"), and <http://www.example.com/> is the short 
form of xsd:anyURI("http://www.example.com/"). See where I'm going with 
this? In RDFON (and hopefully RDF 2.0), the whole concept of a "plain 
literal" drops out of the model altogether! (After replying to TBL in a 
separate email regarding RDFON, I only at this instant realize the 
significance of this!)

Plain literals got into RDF because we didn't quite understand how we 
wanted to represent what programming languages call "primitive types", 
so you got a strange thing called a "literal" that couldn't have 
properties, didn't have a type (until they were added later), and just 
sort of floated around with a vague quasi-resource status (and 
interpreted differently in different contexts). At the time that may 
have been a good choice, based upon the then-current understanding of 
the problem. But I think we've had enough experience to allow us to 
refactor this.

I've always had a dirty feeling ;) when working with RDF literals, but 
wasn't quite sure why. If nothing else, RDFON has allowed me to clarify 
the direction I'd like to go for RDF 2.0 regarding this issue.

Thanks for letting me put my comments here as I try to get my thoughts 
together.

Best,

Garret

Received on Friday, 27 July 2007 00:05:46 UTC