- From: Martyn Horner <martyn.horner@profium.com>
- Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 14:18:32 +0200
- To: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
At the telecon, I was asked to find out about `expectations' re the language attribute in RDF particularly at the model level. I've been talking to our sales and services guys about user expectations: they meet lots of users of metadata (Finnish and French mainly with some other nationalities). Specifically, I've been asking about the demands of users with respect to the identification of literal values with locale and language. The gist (surprise to me) is that there is no expectation of language attribution to survive in bodies of metadata. The test I've been using is to what extent is an object literal considered to be `an element of meaning with multiple textual embodiments'. This seems a significant question where translation is not a one-to-one affair and values carry a cultural content. It's not the way I think of it but metadata seems still to be seen as a locale-locked resource - either `normalized' (as ever) into "en" and mediated by localized software or commercially bound within a national boundary. One aspect I've been pursuing is the equivalence of metadata triples if the object fields differ only by locale. If two triples are the same except for objects l("chat","fr") and l("cat","en"), would these be expected to be handled as equal in reality by any reasonable product implementation? The general tendency is to classify such problems as `not proven'. Most of our customers and prospectives would willingly model such equivalence classes as a separate body of metadata where a resource represents the semantic point and translations are associated as properties. This attitude derives from the fact that most literals which can be taken to represent units of meaning (rather than character strings) belong to limited sets, typically category names. These are usually reduced to locale-free codes and mediated by interfaces. We were wondering about the status and role of language in the RDF model: is it special? This feedback demotes the association of locale with text down to the level of general property (in the body of the metadata) rather than as an intrinsic attribute of the quoted literal. Language is seen by most as a dictionary activity not an issue of representation. Literals are really character sequences and are terminal in that sense (in most users' minds). xml:lang as a special technique of representation is not expected to feature in RDF directly except in bodies of metadata specifically addressing localization and even then language would feature mostly explicitly as predicate codes or property values. This is just general input, with no specific recommendation attached but it does come from a group of people actually promoting RDF in the real world. -- Martyn Horner <martyn.horner@profium.com> Profium (former name Pro Solutions), Les Espaces de Sophia, Immeuble Delta, B.P. 037, F-06901 Sophia-Antipolis, France Tel. +33 (0)4.93.95.31.44 Fax. +33 (0)4.93.95.52.58 Mob. +33 (0)6.21.01.54.56 Internet: http://www.profium.com
Received on Wednesday, 4 July 2001 08:19:00 UTC