Re: RDF-ISSUE-12 (String Literals): deprecate language tags?

On 06/03/11 09:26, Steve Harris wrote:
> On 2011-03-06, at 08:16, Ivan Herman wrote:
>>
>> On Mar 6, 2011, at 24:50 , Sandro Hawke wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 09:24 -0600, Pat Hayes wrote:
>>>> We can allow language tags on xsd:string literals
>>>
>>> How?  I don't think so.  As I recall (from watching the group,
>>> not being in it like you), that was the constraint that got us
>>> into this mess in the first place.  The i18n WG said RDF had to
>>> have language tags on text, and the xsd WG said we couldn't put
>>> language tags on datatyped values.  So our best option seemed to
>>> be to have strings which were not datatyped values.
>>>
>>> We could try pushing on those constraints again and see what has
>>> changed, given years of additional experience.
>>>
>>> My first inclination, in approaching this ISSUE-12, is to first
>>> see if we can get rid of language-tagged literals.  Are there
>>> people who will fight to keep them?  If so, please speak up.
>>
>> I think I would...
>>
>> Multilingual vocabularies use them. This is what SKOS advices to
>> use in terms of alternative labels. This is what any dbpedia page
>> use at the moment (see [1]). I am afraid that it would be a problem
>> if, via deprecation, we rendered all this deployment invalid even
>> through the change path you propose below. Besides, the approach
>> you propose below seems to be way more complicated and less
>> 'user-friendly':-(
>
> I would too. I'm co-author of a reasonably popular, if niche,
> standard that uses lang tags in turtle for internationalisation of UI
> elements.
>
> It's also a selling point for corporates - lang tags aren't amazingly
> well supported by SPARQL, but it's better than what you get in SQL,
> or most noSQL stores.
>
> From a usability point of view the main problem is that you want run
> queries like "give me the rdfs:label of this variable, in @"pt-BR" if
> you have it, otherwise @"pt", otherwise the untagged version, but
> there's no easy way to write that in SPARQL, not really RDF's fault
> though.
>
> - Steve
>

In some UK gov data, there are multiple rdfs:labels for things that are 
""@en and ""@cy (which is Welsh).

	Andy

Received on Sunday, 6 March 2011 14:35:10 UTC