Re: Input sought on datatyping tradeoff

   [Jonathan Borden]
   I understand your arguments but you are not giving SGML nor XML a fair
   evaluation.

   SGML has mandatory schema (called DTD) which is capable of assigning
   unabmiguous datatypes to essentially every syntactic structure ... such
   facilities are called NOTATIONs ....

   ...
   Now XML Schema has been introduced to 'make up' for the shortcomings of XML
   in regard to datatypes in the absense of NOTATIONs and DTDs.

   ...
   The _problem_ is not that XML
   has ambiguous syntax rather that _the type of XML_ that RDF uses does not
   adequately provide for such syntax. Namely RDF and XML Schema are not
   entirely compatible, e.g. it is not possible to write a complete RDF syntax
   specification using XML Schema etc.

   ...
   I suggest that RDF drop this issue for the moment, because a _proper
   treatment_ will likely require changes to the RDF syntax (as Drew points
   out) which would be most appropriately done in RDF 2 (during which RDF 2 and
   XML Schema 2 could be properly aligned for example)

Thanks for clarifying all that.  You're right that the problem is not
SGML or XML, which have already addressed the literal issue.  The
problem is the use of XML sans XML Schema as the vehicle for RDF, leading
to the need for RDF Schema, but at the same time requiring it to
coexist with "untidy" literals that have no datatyping information.

                                             -- Drew McDermott

Received on Tuesday, 16 July 2002 10:47:31 UTC