RE: skos:prefLabel without language tag

Hi,

 

Form http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-lang-tag <http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/%23sec-lang-tag> ,

 

“For example:

<p xml:lang="en">The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.</p>
<p xml:lang="en-GB">What colour is it?</p>
<p xml:lang="en-US">What color is it?</p>
<sp who="Faust" desc='leise' xml:lang="de">
  <l>Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,</l>
  <l>Juristerei, und Medizin</l>
  <l>und leider auch Theologie</l>
  <l>durchaus studiert mit heißem Bemüh'n.</l>
</sp>

The language specified by xml:lang applies to the element where it is specified (including the
values of its attributes), and to all elements in its content unless overridden with another
instance of xml:lang. In particular, the empty value of xml:lang is used on an element B to override
a specification of xml:lang on an enclosing element A, without specifying another language. Within
B, it is considered that there is no language information available, just as if xml:lang had not
been specified on B or any of its ancestors. Applications determine which of an element's attribute
values and which parts of its character content, if any, are treated as language-dependent values
described by xml:lang“

So I conclude that, without any outer context that pre-establishes a language, the following should
be equivalent.

<skos:prefLabel>Dog</skos:prefLabel>

<skos:prefLabel xml:lang=””>Dog</skos:prefLabel>



Kind Regards,

 

Johan De Smedt 

 

 

From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Simon
Spero
Sent: Friday, 24 June, 2011 03:28
To: Antoine Isaac
Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: Re: skos:prefLabel without language tag

 

This definitely either is or isn't an issue :-) The plain literal spec seems to treat the absence of
a value for language tag as having the empty string as the language tag (rather than signalling an
error). Since there doesn't seem to be a function to test for the presence or absence of a language
tag, and since this behavior is consistent with xml:lang in RDF, this probably either isn't an
issue, or is an issue for clarification below  the SKOS level (probably in the rdf-plain-literal
specification?)

 

  <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-plain-literal/#The_Comparison_of_rdf:PlainLiteral_Data_Values>
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-plain-literal 


5.1.3 plfn:lang-from-PlainLiteral


Summary: returns the language tag l if $arg is an rdf:PlainLiteral data value of the form < s, l >,
and returns the empty string if $arg is an rdf:PlainLiteral data value of the form s. If $arg is not
of type rdf:PlainLiteral, this function raises type error
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#ERRFORG0006> err:FORG0006.

 

 

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote:

On 6/23/11 8:40 PM, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Houghton,Andrew<houghtoa@oclc.org>  wrote:

Given these two situations:



<skos:prefLabel>Dog</skos:prefLabel>

<skos:prefLabel xml:lang=””>Dog</skos:prefLabel>

Does the inclusion of *both* prefLabel in a SKOS concept result in breaking
the rule S14 that no two prefLabel should have the same lexical value for
the same language tag?


My read is that S14 is not applicable. In both cases the lexical value
is the same - a plain literal without language tag. The RDFXML doesn't
state that the language tag is "". It is syntax for the absence of a
language tag. These two are different in the value space - without a
language tag it is a string, with a language tag it is a pair of
strings. The set of plain literals without language tags is *not* the
set of pairs (string , "").

Since the rule as stated applies to literals *with* language tags
(they can't be the same unless they are there), S14 would not seem to
be applicable.

That said, this looks like a hole in the spec. It was probably the
intention to also include the case that no two prefLabel without
language tag have the same lexical value.

-Alan

 

Yes, it certainly was.

I have to admit I don't know if there is a hole. It may seem reasonable that there exist some
syntactic matching between literals having an empty tag and literals having no tag, as Simon
reports.





I think section 6.12 of the rdf syntax spec does result in the defaulting of language to at least ""
in production 7.2.16- there doesn't seem to be another literal production that passes  the language
feature.  I must admit that I am not certain how general this assumption is- there are other specs
that seem to distinguish between <s> and <s,l>, but I think only  <s> \equiv <s,""> is consistent?

Simon

 

However, this may be specific to one syntax.
The RDF abstract syntax and other specs are not mentioning that sort of things. Especially, the way
the identity conditions are spelled out at [1,2] seem to argue against amalgamating absence of tag
with presence of any tag (including an empty one).

Anyway, it could be that the simplest thing to do is to publish an erratum to clarify the original
intent, rather than go into a discussion that is difficult, and would perhaps just be against a
moving target, as RDF is currently being worked on... I'll forward the issue.

Cheers,

Antoine

[1]http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/#section-Literal-Equality
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-plain-literal/#The_Comparison_of_rdf:PlainLiteral_Data_Values