Rich literals [was Re: Blank nodes must DIE! ]

On 7/25/20 8:41 AM, Hugh Glaser wrote:
 > I would like the developers' world of tooling to stay as
 > simple as it currently is.  Which to me means anyone wanting
 > one of these magic literals of any kind to be used in RDF,
 > to provide not only the description for the literal, but
 > also define how those literals should be represented in RDF.

Agreed.  I find the idea of rich literals quite intriguing, like the 
excellent UCUM work by Antoine Zimmermann and Maxime Lefrançois just 
discussed.

I could see rich literals being quite helpful in making RDF easier to 
use, provided that the literal<->RDF mapping is available.  This mapping 
requires two functions: one from a given literal to RDF, and the other 
from RDF to literal.

Ideally, these mapping functions should be defined "in-band" in the RDF 
itself, so that data can always be self-describing, and all standard 
tools would automatically support it, without depending on additional 
software installation for each new rich literal type.

Could N3 do this, given that it already has some executable rules 
capability?   Alternatively (or for improved performance), external 
library functions could be provided out-of-band.

David Booth

Received on Monday, 27 July 2020 15:53:27 UTC