Re: A question for RDF parser implementers - whitespace

/ Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org> was heard to say:
[...]
|>Leading and trailing whitespace is significant in strings. The more
|>interesting test would be one that includes
|>
|>      <geo:lat>  42.4   </geo:lat>
|>
|>Where the datatype of geo:lat is float or double or something like
|>that.
|
| Did you mean that to be datatyped?  If not then the literal graph node

I did.

| denotes a string, not a number.  (The <geo:lat> property may define a
| relation that involves interpreting the string as a number, but such
| an interpretation depends on (extra-RDF) knowledge of the property
| used.  As far as RDF is concerned, it's no different from
|
|     <dc:title>  42.4   </dc:title>
|
| If you *did* mean that to be datatyped, as in:
|
|     <geo:lat rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double"
|      >  42.4   </geo:lat>
|
| then this goes to the heart of my question.  I'd expect that to
| treated the same as:
|
|     <geo:lat rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double"
|      >42.4</geo:lat>

So would I.

| But I think the mere fact of being datatyped is insufficient to
| determine the correct whitespace handling, as the xsd:string case
| shows.

Correct. In order to get the whitespace handling right you need to
understand the datatype specified.

Which is impossible, in the general case, I suppose:

     <foo:bar rdf:datatype="http://example.org/XMLSchema#myFooType"
      > 42.4 </geo:lat>

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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