RE: ACTION 2001-11-02#02: Datatyping use-cases from CC/PP

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Pat Hayes [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu]
> Sent: 06 November, 2001 20:17
> To: Stickler Patrick (NRC/Tampere)
> Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: ACTION 2001-11-02#02: Datatyping use-cases from CC/PP
> 
> 
> >......
> >It appears to me that we have two separate issues here:
> >
> >1. The association of data type to literal.
> >2. The prescriptive/descriptive nature of data types.
> 
> Can you enlarge on that second point? I have no idea what you mean, 
> and it doesn't seem to have come up before.
> 
> For what its worth, I have always assumed that RDF is basically a 
> descriptive language, so if 'prescriptive' is somehow in contrast to 
> descriptive then I might take umbrage.
> 
> Pat

There was discussion about this a few weeks ago in the
rdf-interest list (or was it rdf-logic...?)

Anyway, the gist is that if both a local type and a range
are defined, then the range can be seen as prescriptive such
that a value can be deemed invalid if the local type is 
not equivalent to or a subclass of the range type.

If no local type is defined for the value, then the range
can be seen as descriptive of the type of the value.

The latter is all fine and good, until we think about lexical
forms and the fact that lexical forms are specific to a
given data type, and thus, the descriptive approach is not
reliable as it may suggest an interpretation for which the
lexical form is either not valid or "unknown".

See my other discussion about this point posted today, along
with the assertion (which you are apparently going to take
umbrage about) that range is *only* prescriptive...

Cheers,

Patrick

Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2001 02:15:04 UTC