[rdf12-semantics] Feedback (Part 3) W3C Candidate Recommendation Snapshot (07 April 2026)

Dear RDF & SPARQL Working Group members,

this is my third (and last planned) feedback for the RDF 1.2 Semantics, 
which extends my previous feedback by one additional point. This is a 
technical (not just editorial or terminological) point and I needed some 
time for this to check.

* 18) ยง5, Definition of a simple interpretation, item 6: IT is defined 
as an _injective_ mapping from IRxIPxIR into IR. I do not understand why 
IT needs to be (always) injective. As far as I can tell this feature 
isn't applied or referred to anywhere else in the document, at least not 
in any explicit or obvious way. I checked several other places in the 
document where the IT function is used or plays some role implicitly and 
also checked all the test cases in the RDF 1.2 Semantics test suite that 
deal with triple terms, but couldn't find anything were injectivity 
would be necessary. Demanding that IT must be injective is a pretty 
strong requirement, and having such a strong requirement is IMO not well 
in line with the other, deliberately weak and minimalistic requirements 
of simple entailment. So if there is really a need for the injectivity 
of IT (which I may well have missed), it should be clearly explained in 
the document. Otherwise I suggest to drop the requirement, i.e., let IT 
be just a mapping from IRxIPxIR into IR. At least for simple 
interpretations; it might still turn out to be a necessary feature for 
other entailment regimes, but for them it can then still be required as 
needed.

Best regards
Michael

Received on Saturday, 6 June 2026 18:43:30 UTC