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

On Thu, 9 Jul 2020 at 15:54, Patrick J Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:

>
> 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’.
>

Not to mention the RDF Model and Syntax and Schema WGs, 1997-1999, who (out
of politeness to the XML juggernaut) declined to say 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
> >
> >
>
>
>