Re: Comments on this afternoon session on Turtle

On 4/14/2011 8:54 AM, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
> * Lee Feigenbaum<lee@thefigtrees.net>  [2011-04-14 07:25-0400]
>> On 4/14/2011 3:47 AM, Antoine Zimmermann wrote:
>>> Just a comment and what my votes would have been if I could have joined
>>> the session.
>>>
>>> ========
>>> PROPOSED: Mark xs:string as archaic for use in RDF, recommending use of
>>> plain literals instead. Recommend that systems silently convert
>>> xs:string data to plain literals.
>>>
>>> -1
>>>
>>> I always thought of plain literals as a written utterance in an
>>> unspecified language. This is not what xs:strings are. Strings are a
>>> sequence of characters, irrespective of any language. They cannot be
>>> translated or assigned a language tag. xs:string should be used for
>>> things like serial numbers, identifiers, passwords, etc.
>>>
>>> I would rather have plain literals with no language tags implicitly
>>> meaning xs:string (as Jean-François proposed but it seemed unnoticed).
>>> xs:string is not defined by RDF anyway, I don't know why RDF should
>>> reject this particular XML datatype.
>>>
>>> If plain literals with no lang tag are implicitly typed with xs:string,
>>> then all literals have either a datatype or a language tag, which
>>> simplifies the manipulation of literals.
>>
>> I agree with this point of view.
>
> Are there use cases which motivate having a special datatype to
> indicate that there's no possibility of a langtag? I recognize that
> this datatype comes for free from XSD, but we have an opportunity to
> encourage simplification.
>
> The premise I question is whether the additional diversity (and likely
> confusion) that comes of promoting both xsd:string and plain literal
> solves more problems than it creates.

I just think it's simpler and less weird to have datatyped literals and 
languaged literals and nothing else.

Lee

>
>
>> Lee
>>
>>>
>>> =======
>>> PROPOSED: close ISSUE-18 by requiring digits after the decimal point, as
>>> in "18.0".
>>> PROPOSED: Allow dots inside local part and namespace part of qnames in
>>> Turtle, aligning with SPARQL syntax
>>> PROPOSED: Turtle should remain as a syntax only for Triples, some other
>>> syntax should be defined to represent quad data
>>>
>>> +1 to all of these.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 14 April 2011 13:03:56 UTC