Re: Axiom: Opacity of URIs

Ronald,

In this case you are using URIs to represent words, which really is 
bridging two very different worlds.

URIs are typically used to represent the identify of a web page or the 
semantics of  a data field, which are fairly well defined, whereas words 
in a language have meanings which morph and fork with time.
Most of the advice about choosing good URIs, then, will be less 
applicable t you when you use a URI to refer to a word.

Yes, it seems reasonable to qualify it with a language.

Note that RDF literals carry an optional language designator.

Check out the wordnet work, and glossary work such as SIOC.

Tim


Ronald P. Reck wrote:
>
> I have a question about URIs. I think I understand the axioms here:
> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html
>
> My question concerns the Axiom: Opacity of URIs
>
> When I work with words/strings I want to say something about them.
> Now, imagine the English word "pain".
> rdf:about="http://foo.com/lexicon/token#pain"
>
> Its real helpful to be able to derive its URI so that every time I come
> upon the same string I dont incur the "pain" associated with asking some
> system the question: do you know the URI for the string "pain"?
>
> Now, imagine I am processing French and I also have the string "pain".
> Well, I believe its intrinsically a different word so I think it makes 
> sense to change my URI structure to
> rdf:about="http://foo.bar/lexicon/fre/token#pain"
>
> Attractive but wrong?
> Wrong only when I look for French words with "//fre" ?
>
> I run into the same situation when I want to manage definitions for
> words from multiple communities of interest. The word "frequency" has
> slightly different meanings in the domain of mathematics, physics or
> signal processing. Again, it is attractive to have derivable URI's.
>
> Can someone please comment or point me at relevant disscussion in this 
> area? -thanks.
>

Received on Friday, 5 January 2007 15:29:13 UTC