Re: Datayped tagged literals: a case for option 4 vs option 2d

Ok, good points. You now have my vote in favour of your proposal.

Le 28/09/2011 09:48, Richard Cyganiak a écrit :
> Antoine,
>
> On 26 Sep 2011, at 14:22, Antoine Zimmermann wrote:
>>> No programming language knows that "foo@en" is supposedly a string
>>> tagged as English.
>>
>> Right but RDF and other specs can---and do---introduce types of their
>> own (e.g., rdf:XMLLiteral, rdf:PlainLiteral, owl:decimal, owl:real for
>> instance). The datatype mechanism of RDF is extensible so that we can do this kind of things.
>
> The nice things about extensibility points is that the misdesigned and bizarre extensions just get ignored.
>
> I consider i18n support an important part of RDF. I don't want to see it converted into a misdesigned and bizarre extension that subsequently will be ignored.
>
> (Aside: As an extension mechanism, datatypes in RDF are a miserable failure. Outside of the core RDF and OWL specs, *not a single* new datatype has been defined that has actually caught on and become popular.)
>
>> However, I'd like to know what you say about implementations that use Literal.getDatatype() or Literal.getDatatypeURI() to do some specific tasks for tagged literals?
>>
>> They'll have to change their tests from if(dt==null) {...} to if(dt.equals(RDF.LangString)) {...}.
>
> No. The check if(dt==null) doesn't test for language-tagged strings in RDF 2004. It tests for plain literals. The check for language-tagged strings in RDF 2004 is if(lang!=null) and that still works with the new proposal.
>
>> Can you justify that this is not significant, while code using getLexicalForm() is?
>
> In my proposal, many applications won't require any changes.
>
> Some will require changes.
>
> In the worst-case scenario, if no change is made, "foo"@en would be treated like "foo"^^rdf:langString would have been treated in RDF 2004 (with rdf:langString being an unknown datatype URI). That's still sort of reasonable. It's breakage, but not horrible breakage.
>
> In your proposal, the *default* case (not worst case) would be displaying your name as "Antoine@fr Zimmermann@fr". Every single string with a language tag, in every application, would be broken. That's horrible breakage.
>
> Best,
> Richard

-- 
Antoine Zimmermann
ISCOD / LSTI - Institut Henri Fayol
École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne
158 cours Fauriel
42023 Saint-Étienne Cedex 2
France
Tél:+33(0)4 77 42 66 03
Fax:+33(0)4 77 42 66 66
http://zimmer.aprilfoolsreview.com/

Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 08:16:19 UTC