Re: "Language-tagged strings Re: Toward easier RDF: a proposal"

On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 13:16:02 +0000, Hugh Glaser wrote:
> 
> 
> > On 23 Nov 2018, at 12:57, Frans Knibbe <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl> wrote:
> > 
> > Using a general way to make statements about literals sounds good to me. For geographical data I also see too many statements being squashed into a single literal.  It is difficult to process and to store.
> > Extensibilty could also be an issue. Why have a standard provision for indicating the language of a text string and not its pronunciation for example? How else can we tell the difference between the English nouns "shower" and "shower"?
> 
> "shower" and "shower" and not English nouns - they are strings, and both the same.
> If you want the English nouns, you should be using URIs for the nouns, which possibly have that string attached.
> Similarly, strings don't usually have pronunciations - things associated with strings do.
> (My three ha'p'orth, others' mileage may vary.) 

Ah, but if literals are 1 component things and a string is just a string,
then what would one state by using RDF properties for eg. languages?

If "shower" and "shower" are not English nouns but just strings,
then they aren't English anything, are they?

> > Op vr 23 nov. 2018 om 13:07 schreef Hugh Glaser <hugh@glasers.org>:
> > Ah, good topic.
> > 
> > So another thing I don't understand (:-)) is why we have to have language tags on strings at all, and indeed datatypes.
> > (OK, it's because of XML heritage or something, I guess.)
> > But we have a perfectly good way of representing knowledge about things.
> > It is a real pain to create these 3 component literals and to query for different languages and datatypes in SPARQL.
> > And worse still, if you want to query for strings that may or may not have language tags on, you need to do some real messing about.
> > I often end up adding @en to all the strings, or removing region tags etc., just so I can do things more easily, which is surely a Bad Thing.
> > 
> > Surely languages and datatypes should simply be RDF properties of Literals, which are 1 component things?
> > Much easier to explain to developers, and for them to use.
> > (If indeed they want to use raw RDF.)
[...]

-- 
Micha³ Politowski

Received on Friday, 23 November 2018 14:00:10 UTC