rif:text == owl:internationalizedString

OWL has just re-invented rif:text.   See:

    The unary datatype owl:internationalizedString represents pairs of
    strings and language tags, and thus represents plain RDF literals
    with a language tag. The lexical space of this datatype is a string
    of the form "text@languageTag"; thus, the text of each lexical value
    before last @ sign is the actual text, and the text after the last @
    sign is the language tag of the constant. Each such lexical value is
    interpreted as a pair <"text",languageTag>.  

           - http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Syntax#Datatypes

and 

    The value space for owl:internationalizedString consists of all pairs
    <"text",languageTag>, where "text" is a string and languageTag is a
    language tag.

           - http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Semantics#Datatype_Maps

They added a shortcut to their presentation syntax (which they called
their "functional syntax") :

    EXAMPLE: 
 
    "Padre de familia"@es is an abbreviation to an internationalized
    constant "Padre de familia@es"^^xsd:internationalizedString -- that
    is, a pair consisting of the string "Padre de familia" and the
    language tag es denoting the Spanish language. Note that the lexical
    values of xsd:internationalizedString constants are strings that
    contain the actual string value, the @ sign, and the language tag,
    without any spaces between them.


           - http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Syntax#Constants

This is not particularly surprising -- in retrospect, RDF Core should
have done this in RDF when they developed language tags.  It is
reassuring that both groups came up with the same design (as odd as it
is, putting the language tag inside the string!).

Moving forward, I think we (both groups, at least, maybe consulting with
SWIG and the XML Schema) need to pick one name:

     - {rif,owl,rdf,xsd, ...?}:{text, internationalizedString, ...?}

and decide which WG will get it through the process first.  It might
make sense to split this out into it's own Recommendation-Track
document.  It might just qualify as the shortest-ever Rec, but that
seems fine.

(Does anyone remember where we got on talking to XML Schema WG about
this?)

         -- Sandro

Received on Tuesday, 6 May 2008 12:52:25 UTC