Re: What do the ontologists want

dehora wrote:
>
> I think both can be done in RDF. KR reification can be approximated
> if an RDF serialization is embedded in a string literal. Assume we
> have a Noddy linear form for RDF that we can use as an object language:
>
>   s:X, p:Y, o:Z.
>
> where s: p: o: are markers for subject property object and on their
> right is a URI or a literal, '.' is just a terminator and ',' is a
> separator (we could easily use brackets/arrows or some such, doesn't
> really matter). String literals are inside double quotes, nesting
> these quotes is ok. For brevity, let's pretend that anything which
> isn't double quoted to the right of s: p: o: is a URI as per the M&S
> etc (many URIs can be an eyesore).
>
> To KR reify this statement:
>
>   s:sky, p:is o:blue
>
> I'd suggest simply doing this:
>
>   "s:sky, p:is o:blue"
>
> Since RDF literals are just strings, they'll be mentioned not used:
>
>   s:elvis, p:says, o:"s:sky, p:is o:blue".

Is this not essentially what I have proposed:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/2001May/0081.html
http://www.openhealth.org/RDF/RDFmediatype.html

the difference being that it is not clear if you intend the "s:foo" form to
refer to a specific QName or new top level URI scheme. By encapsulating the
statement in a fragment identifier, and using a well known order
(predicate,subject,object) the above is represented as:

(:says, :elvis, (:is, :sky, :blue))

and with syntactic sugar

#triple(:says, :elvis, <#triple(:is,:sky,:blue)>)

as a fragment identifier, this is intended to be represented as a string.
In any case it is trivially parsed into a structure that can be interpreted
as a predicate by e.g. a Prolog engine.

Jonathan Borden
The Open Healthcare Group
http://www.openhealth.org