- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:05:21 -0500
- To: Patrick Stickler <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
- Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
>On 2002-02-12 21:05, "ext Brian McBride" <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com> wrote: > > >> rdfms-literalsubjects: Should the subjects of RDF statements be allowed to >> be literals? >> >> I suggest that changing the RDF/XML syntax to support this is out >>of charter. >> >> Propose >> >> o the WG resolves that the current syntaxes (RDF/XML, n-triples, graph >> syntax) do not allow literals as subjects. > >Fine. > >> o the WG notes that it is aware of no reason why literals should not be >> resources and a future WG with a less restrictive charter may extend the >> syntaxes to allow literals as the subjects of statements. > >Not fine. There are very real reasons (now) why they should not. > >If literals become tidy, then literals cannot be subjects. Sure they can. Literals denote character strings. Why cannot a string be a subject? I might want to say something about it, eg that its written in German. This has got nothing to do with tidiness. >Literals >themselves do not denote resources. Literals, in conjunction with >some context such as datatype or other qualification may participate >in the denotation of a resource, but they themselves do not denote >the resource (if they are tidy). > >If we want to allow the literal node to denote the >resource, by hanging all those qualifications off the literal node >so that the literal node becomes a literal-in-context, which denotes >a resource, then the literal node also denotes the context/occurrence >of that literal, and thus literals cannot be tidy. You are objecting to a more advanced case which would require literals to be context-sensitive. Thats a different issue. >This was one of the key hot-issues in the recent tidy/untidy debates >and I tried to point out the ramification that adopting tidy literals >precluded literals as subjects (the P++ idiom). The point there was not allowing literals to be subjects, but the fact that it made literals context-sensitive in meaning. THAT was the killer problem that required untidy literals. Allowing literal subjects is orthogonal. In haste. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Wednesday, 13 February 2002 17:05:32 UTC