Re: Datatypes (was: Blank nodes must DIE! ...)

Hi Graham

> On Jul 9, 2020, at 6:29 AM, Graham Klyne <gk@ninebynine.org> wrote:
> 
> On 09/07/2020 06:29, Patrick J Hayes wrote:
>> BTW, for straighforward datatypes like the xml schema, which all relate a value to a string, it occurs to me that you could do this by using the datatype name as an RDF property. So instead of, say,
>> ex:Pat ex:age “75”^^xsd:integer .
>> you might have
>> ex:Pat ex:age _:x .
>> _:x xsd:integer “75” .
>> where the “75” is now type xsd:string. This makes a kind of intuitive sense since datatypes are required to define a mapping from strings to values, and we have used the datatype name in exactly that way. (It would make even more sense if RDF allowed literals to be subjects, so we could write it the other way round.)
>> And since it is all in one triple, the issue, about how we know when we have enough proprties, vanishes.
> 
> I think I recall Dan Connolly proposing this back in the dim and distant day. (I think it was also related to TimBL's "interpretation properties" ideas [1].)

I think that just about every syntactically possible variation was discussed at least twice, back in the day. I remember telling someone about the (first) RDF WG, that it had taken it 9 months to decide how to say ’three’. 

I actually like the current way, using typed literals, better than any of the others. I just wish we had allowed datatypes which used more than one character string, so that (for just one example that caused way too much hassle) language-tagged strings, but also things like latitude+longitude or number+ unit (5 inches, 27 cm, 3.5 kg) could have been handled naturally. Right now it is not easy to say in RDF that the Thames is 215 miles long, and also that 215 miles is the very same thing as 346 km. But this kind of thing is ubiquitous. 

Pat

> 
> Too late, I came to rather like this approach:  could we have avoided introducing datatypes, and just use defined RDF vocabulary instead?
> 
> [1] https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/InterpretationProperties.html
> 
> #g
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 9 July 2020 14:49:34 UTC