Re: URI for language identifiers

> since you might not be familiar with XTM syntax, the idea is
> that for example language.xtm provides elements such as
> 
> <topic id="de">
> ...
> </topic>
> 
> witch 'produces' the URI
> 
> http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/language.xtm#de
> 
> which can be used to identify the German language.

I'm confused.  The topic map spec says the id on a <topic> element
identifies that particular <topic> element in the document [1].  That
sounds in line with conventional XML use and with XPointer use [2],
not to mention conventional HTML usage.

But that's at odds with saying that
   http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/language.xtm#de
identifies the German language.

Did you mean to say instead that 
   http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/language.xtm#de should be used as
a subjectIndicatorRef for the German language?  That makes sense, but
it means it is *NOT* a good RDF identifier for the language.  URI-Refs
occuring in RDF refer directly not indirectly as subject indicators.
(That is, "http://www.w3.org/Consortium/" as an RDF term refers to a
web page about the W3C, not to the W3C itself.)

(I made a proposal that RDF URI-Refs should sometimes be seen as
subject indicators [4], but it was not accepted.  After trying to
implement my proposal I'm not so fond of it myself.)

   -- sandro

[1] http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/#elt-topic
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-xptr-framework-20030325/#shorthand
[3] http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/#elt-subjectIndicatorRef
[4] http://www.w3.org/2002/12/rdf-identifiers/