- From: Graham Klyne <Graham.Klyne@MIMEsweeper.com>
- Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 16:14:14 +0000
- To: Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com
- Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
At 05:22 PM 11/6/01 +0200, Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote: >It is true that programmers are used to dealing primarily >only with the value spaces, but that is because the lexical >forms of values are not preserved, but only a means to an >end, that end being a canonical internal representation of >the value. > >Since RDF preserves the lexical form, we cannot enjoy such >a convenience. At least not at the RDF level. I don't understand "RDF preserves" -- RDF is just a language, a format, for expressing some things. RDF uses the lexical form as part of this expression, to express a meaning that may, in many cases, be expressed equivalently with different lexical forms. In this respect, RDF seems just like most programming languages. [...] >So the solutions that we come up with must at least preserve >the needed information for interpreting the lexical forms >of literals as well as organize that information in a consistent >manner for the sake of implementation. What you say here may be true of some system implementations that use RDF. But RDF itself is just a means of communication between such systems. I think it would be most inappropriate for the RDF specification to dictate what processing an RDF-using system should perform, and how. What is important for the working group is to capture the meaning of any given RDF, in a way that allows us to determine whether or not truth is preserved by some transformation under some stated set of assumptions. #g ------------------------------------------------------------ Graham Klyne MIMEsweeper Group Strategic Research <http://www.mimesweeper.com> <Graham.Klyne@MIMEsweeper.com> ------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Tuesday, 6 November 2001 11:21:49 UTC