Re: CURIEs vs. QNames

/ Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@x-port.net> was heard to say:
| Hi Norman,
|
|> | With "cat" defined as "http://iptc.org/category/" (it's an example),
|> | consider:  <iptc:subject code="cat:15000000" />
|> |
|> | "cat:15000000", after being expanded to 
|> | "http://iptc.org/category/15000000",
|> | could unambiguously identify the concept "Sport".
|> 
|> But wouldn't
|> 
|>   <iptc:subject code="cat:sport" />
|> 
|> mean that "cat:sport", after being expanded to 
|> "http://iptc.org/category/sport", could unambiguously 
|> identify the concept "Sport"?
|
| Unfortunately that just defers the problem, since at some point, someone
| will have an existing taxonomy that contains a code like:

I wasn't suggesting that you should use cat:sport instead (well, that
wasn't my point in this message anyway ;-), I was just trying to point
out that if cat:sport is a valid CURIE then they *are* syntactically
indistinguishable from QNames and my objection stands.

| (This *would be* N3, except it isn't, because N3 is another example of a
| language that mandates QNames...which sort of makes the point that I've been
| trying to argue; when a non-XML language like N3 restricts the way that
| 'abbreviated URIs' are formed, to that used in XML+Namespaces element and
| attribute name formation, you know something has gone wrong!)

That argument doesn't hold for N3. N3 is a serialization format for
RDF. RDF has an XML syntax for which N3 is attempting to be an
alternate serialization. It seems entirely reasonable in that
circumstance that N3 should have more restrictions than are actually,
grammatically necessary in N3.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

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