Re: Comments on this afternoon session on Turtle

On 2011-04-14, at 14:03, Lee Feigenbaum wrote:

> 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.

I disagree, and I think it's very odd that the canonical serialisation would be:

"chat"^^xsd:string          }
"chat"@en-GB                } - all xsd:strings
"chat"@fr                   }

v's

"chat"                      }
"chat"@en-GB                } - all xsd:strings
"chat"@fr                   }

- Steve

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Received on Thursday, 14 April 2011 13:15:58 UTC