Re: 2001-09-07#5 Literals

Bill:
> I like to fight the good fight against that: a lang tag
> is clearly not necessary for all literals.

If RDF 2.0 goes with Sergey's datatyping suggestion it would certainly make
sense then to move xml:lang off as a property of the bNode above the literal
string.

I currently have shared understanding with Jan on this one, some literals
have a lang tag and some don't. When they do, it matters.

If we feel it is important to be able to specify that some literals *do not*
have a lang tag then we could use xml:lang="und"   (und is the ISO-639-2 tag
for undetermined).

e.g.


<rdf:RDF xml:lang="it" xmlns:rdf="..."
   xmlns:eg="http://esampio.it/"
   >
   <!-- Questo documento e` scritto in italiano. -->
   <rdf:Description rdf:about="e-mail:Jeremy_Carroll@hp.com">
     <eg:cognome>Carroll</eg:cognome>
     <eg:codice-fiscale xml:lang="und">65CA X3450 JJX</eg:codice-fiscale>
     <eg:numero-patente xml:lang="und">343589201
459215-0</eg:numero-patente>
   </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>


This gives a default language (italian) to the document, my family name is
then understood as an Italian language string, whereas the fiscal code and
driving license numbers are both specified as an "undetermined" language
string. (Both details are incorrect!).

I don't think this is a good idea.

Bill:
> And it makes abstract notions of RDF dependent on at least one
> other spec, that isn't in my mind central to web architecture.

rdf depends on xml depends on xml:lang depends on rfc 3066 depends on
(ISO-639-2 and ISO-3166).

It's a living.

Personally I think the *world wide* bit of web architecture is important. My
understanding is that the I18N WG wish charmod to be a central plank of web
architecture, and charmod depends on rfc 3066 amongst other things (like
unicode). The obscure dependencies thing is a bit of a problem though.

A new language tag is going through at the moment, Penang Sign Language,
proposed xml:lang="sgn-MY-P". A document that wasn't legal may become legal.
I don't think that that has any deep influence on RDF though.

Jeremy

Received on Friday, 19 October 2001 07:48:51 UTC