Re: rif:text == owl:internationalizedString

Sandro Hawke wrote:
> 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.

makes sense.

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

the conclusion was that the XML schema working group was not interested
in this datatype, because in the XML world you would simply construct a
complex datatype for representing these things.

Best, Jos

> 
>          -- Sandro
> 

-- 
Jos de Bruijn            debruijn@inf.unibz.it
+390471016224         http://www.debruijn.net/
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