RE: Language = Namespace. was: How namespace names might be used

Dan Conolly wrote:

> > 3) Given an RDF document referring to that URI, does it make statements
> > about a namespace, a language or an HTML document???
>
> about a namespace/language.

OK.

Let's take the first RDF example I can find right now
(http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/, section 2.1.1 Examples):

<quote>
Consider as a simple example the sentence:

Ora Lassila is the creator of the resource http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila.
This sentence has the following parts:

 Subject (Resource)   http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila
 Predicate (Property)   Creator
 Object (literal)   "Ora Lassila"
</quote>

I now create a namespace name which happens to be
"http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila". Which means that I have re-used an
existing URI as namespace name, which is perfectly legal according to the
namespace recommendation. Does the fact that the same URI is now in use as
namespace name as well affect any of the RDF properties of this URI (for
instance the "Creator" property)?

> > 4) If all of them are *the same thing*, what happens if the
> HTML document is
> > replaced by an XML schema document? (I think this happened
> recently @ the
> > namespace RECs own URI).
>
> What happens is that clients get a different representation of the
> resource (i.e. the namespace/language) from what they previously got.
> Just like when a GIF image is replace by a PNG.

To make this consistent, the namespace REC at least would need to require to
use an URI ref that actually does more than "naming" the namespace. Right
now it only requires a URI ref, but doesn't preclude the namespace creator
from just re-using something that is already there, but happens not to be
used as a namespace name yet.

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 06:10:42 UTC