specifying literals

I see yet another specification of literals in
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2002Dec/att-0053/00-rc#section-Graph-Literal

That has the same problem.

Here's a suggested replacement:

6.5 RDF Literals

  To define a literal in an RDF graph,
  let S be the set of Unicode
  strings in Normal Form C,
  L be the set of language identifiers [RFC3066],
  and U be the set of RDF URI references.

  A plain literal is an element of the
  union of S with SxL; i.e. it's either
  a string or a string paired with a
  language identifier.

  A typed literal is an element of the
  union of SxU with SxUxL.

  Note that U and L are disjoint
  (every member of U contains a colon;
   no member of L contains a colon),
  so SxL doesn't intersect SxU.

Then literal equality falls out from
the traditional definition of tuple
equality and string equality.

I don't see what the NOTE about literals
being distinguisable from URI references
is supposed to mean; that's the same sort
of double-speak that's giving us trouble
in the XML Schema spec.



-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/