Re: review of rdf:text, dated 2008-11-04

I reviewed the rdf:text document and though I went through it quickly I did find 
the statement that the number of characters is infinite to be bizarre.

As I followed the ensuing thread the more I heard it repeated the more it 
bothered me, since it is so obviously false.

I can share from my 20+ yrs experience as an ontology designer that whenever you 
compromise the truths of the universe (aka ontology) for some engineering 
shortcut, you end up paying some portability or maintenance cost in the long run.

Anyway, lets mark it for now with an editor's note and publish.

How do we handle rdf:text issues (whose tracker does it go on)?

Jos de Bruijn wrote:
> - the set of characters is finite, and thus it cannot be assumed that it
> is infinite. The problem that some OWL 2 implementations might have some
> issue with the finiteness of this set is of no concern to this datatype
> per se. In fact, the XML schema string datatype is based on a finite set
> of characters, and so OWL 2 implementations will run into problems with
> this datatype.
> If there is really a problem to be expected with implementations of OWL
> 2, it should be dealt with in the OWL 2 specification, and not the
> specification of this datatype.


-Chris

-- 
Dr. Christopher A. Welty                    IBM Watson Research Center
+1.914.784.7055                             19 Skyline Dr.
cawelty@gmail.com                           Hawthorne, NY 10532
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty

Received on Tuesday, 11 November 2008 15:23:54 UTC