comment on emptyPropertyElt

I just noticed that

...

	<rdf:Description rdf:about="foo">
	  <bar />
	</rdf:Description>

is valid RDF, and, moreover, gives rise to the following n-triple

	foo bar "" .

 (or something like this - I don't know what language tag would be applied).

I think that this is a terrible design decision.  It introduces yet another
special case into the RDF grammar, as evidenced by the wording in 7.2.19


7.2.19 Production emptyPropertyElt 

...

    * If there are no attributes or only the optional rdf:ID attribute i
      then o := literal(literal-value:="", literal-language := e.language)
      ...

...


I suggest that this be made illegal syntax.  A construction like the above
is probably a mistake, and should not be silently accepted.  Hallucinating
a string here is a particularly bad idea.


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research