proposed changes to the rdf:text document for option 5

[Suggested change to Abstract - yes this is not part of option 5]

This document presents the specification of a datatype for plain
literals in RDF.


[Changes to two last paragraphs of Section 1]

To address these deficiencies, this specification introduces a datatype
called rdf:text, which uses the rdf: prefix because it refers to parts
of the conceptual model of RDF.  This extension, however, does not
change the conceptual model of RDF, and thus does not affect the
specifications that depend on the conceptual model of RDF such as
SPARQL.  The value space of rdf:text consists of all data values
assigned to RDF plain literals, which allows RDF applications to
explicitly refer to this set (e.g., in rdfs:range assertions).

Because RDF plain literals are already a part of RDF and SPARQL
syntaxes, rdf:text literals are always written as RDF plain literals in
RDF and SPARQL syntaxes.


[Change to entirely of Section 4 
 - the last paragraph might need some tweaking]

4 Syntax for rdf:text literals

It is obvious from the above that the value space of rdf:text contains
exactly all data values assigned to RDF plain literals (with or without a
language tag).  The rdf:text datatype thus provides an
explicit way of referring to this set. 

To eliminate another source of syntactic redundancy, the form of
rdf:text literals in syntaxes for RDF graphs and SPARQL basic graph
patterns is the already existing syntax for the corresponding plain RDF
literal, and not the syntax for a typed RDF literal.  Therefore, typed
literals with rdf:text as the datatype do not not occur syntaxes for RDF
graphs, nor in syntaxes for SPARQL basic graph patterns.

As a consequence of the above, applications that employ the rdf:text
datatype *MUST* use plain RDF literals when they transfer RDF graphs
(because there is no other way to write typed literals with datatype
rdf:text) and will retain a large degree of interoperability with
applications that do not understand the rdf:text datatype.




peter

Received on Wednesday, 27 May 2009 15:30:52 UTC