Re: RDF-ISSUE-12 (String Literals): Reconcile various forms of string literals (time permitting) [Cleanup tasks]

On 06/03/11 08:12, Steve Harris wrote:
>> What about just saying, "please don't use xs:string any more", and
>> "if
>>> you (some RDF software) find an xs:string, you SHOULD convert it
>>> to a plain literal".  Would that pretty much solve the problem?
> That's the inverse of what I suggested just before I read this mail.
> It works for me (from a storage point of view it's probably simpler),
> but I understand that it's not ideal for some reasoning systems?

the inverse was:
On 06/03/11 07:59, Steve Harris wrote:
 >     "foo"^^xsd:string  ->   "foo"^^xsd:string
 >     "foo"  ->   "foo"^^xsd:string
 >     "foo"@de  ->   "foo"^^xsd:string @de


I think it works better as

   "foo"^^xsd:string -> "foo"
   "foo"@de  ->   "foo"@de

because at the moment, code can assume that a literal has either a lang 
tag or a datatype but not both.  If that changes, a niggly bugs may appear.

A parser(only)-change doing the conversation preserves current RDF 
except for the loss of round trip appearance but if xsd:string acquires 
a lang tag, code outside the parser changes.

rdf:PlainLiteral is the wrong solution - it hides the lang tag in the 
lexical form.

If we had that

      "foo"  ->   "foo"^^xsd:string
      "foo"@de  ->   "foo"^^xsd:lang-de
      "foo"^^xsd:string  ->   "foo"^^xsd:string

i.e a datatype per language tag, that might work but it is still 
assuming re-tooling of RDF processors and RDF-driven application to 
handle properly.

   "foo"^^xsd:string -> "foo"

seems to be best for backwards compatibility.

The value space of plain literal without language tag (SPARQL:simple 
literals) is xsd:string.

The value space*s* of plain literal with language tag needs sorting out.

A simple RDF processor can work by xsd:string -> simple literal. 
Current systems and applications continue to work.

	Andy

Received on Sunday, 6 March 2011 16:37:51 UTC