- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:22:49 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Ron Daniel <rdaniel@interwoven.com>
- cc: Dave Beckett <dave.beckett@bristol.ac.uk>, RDF Core <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Ron Daniel wrote: > Dan Connolly raised this issue, stating it as: > > A statement with a parseType of 'Literal' has as its object > an XML structure, not a simple string. For example, the first > character of the literal <foo>bar</foo> is not '<'. > > This is an interesting suggestion. It raises several questions. > I'll confine myself to one (at least for now)... > > 1) What evidence is there that this was the intent of the > M&S 1.0 specification? > > > Searching through the archives of the w3c-rdf-syntax-wg > list for 'infoset' turns up VERY few messages. Other than > the indexes into the lists, I see only three: > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-rdf-syntax-wg/1998Oct/0089.html > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-rdf-syntax-wg/1998Oct/0093.html > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/1998OctDec/0030.html > > In fact, these are all in the same thread, meaning that in > all the email generated by the rdf-syntx WG, 'infoset' had one > unique mention. > > Re-reading those messages, IMHO, supports a very different > interpretation of the WG intent - that parseType="Literal" was a > stop-gap measure to let us deal with embedded XML content through > the simple expedient of turning off RDF parsing of that content. > In fact, the phrase "generates no tuples" is used in the emails > above in a manner that seems to indicate that the WG wanted to > completely ignore the content and markup in the Literal, and treat it > as a simple string. Later applications might do something with the > markup. > > If that is the case, then the clarification document can't say > that M&S 1.0 requires the generation of tuples for the infoset of > the embedded content. That seems the opposite of the intent. > > > Dan's suggestion could be within the scope of a 2.0 revisitation > of M&S, but clearly seems to exceed our chartered tasks. Regarding the aspect of our charter relating purely to revision of the Model and Syntax REC, I agree. However one might argue that we have a little more room to move since we also chartered to complete our work on the (as yet unfinalised) RDF Schema document. This includes consideration of a better approach to typing of literal strings in the light of XML Schema and developments in the XML world that weren't available in 1998. In my view the availability of a widely implemented and understood approach to structuring of XML literals would help us decide whether to take a liberal or strict view of our charted role. Right now I don't see much implemented in this area so am correspondingly inclined towards conservatism. Dan
Received on Wednesday, 11 July 2001 23:22:51 UTC