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

On 2011-09-28, at 08:48, Richard Cyganiak wrote:

> 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 used to agree with this opinion, but now strongly disagree.

The problem is when misdesigned/bizarre extensions get used in some areas, so can't be deprecated, but still cause endless confusion for people coming to RDF anew.

Good examples are RDF containers (used in RSS) and RDF collections (used in OWL). They're both pretty nasty to work with, but can't realistically be removed, and appear at first glance to solve a real problem.

> 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.

Agreed.

> (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.)

Not sure I agree, XSD already provides a wide variety of useful types, and it's rare that people have to step outside that. It is true that non-XSD types are pretty rare in the wild, but I'm not sure that qualifies as a failure.

- Steve

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Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 10:01:07 UTC