- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 10:35:28 -0600
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- CC: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
Pat Hayes wrote: [...] > >> >If we want to say "my shoe size is some > >> >integer whose decimal representation is '10'", > >> > >> But I don't want to say that. I want to say that my shoe size is 10. > > > >Yes, but we're not here to design a syntax; we're here to > >clarify the existing one. And the existing one doesn't have > >that expressive power, I don't believe. > > Is > > Pat shoeSize "10" . > > illegal RDF, in the current syntax? (Assuming that 'Pat' and > 'shoeSize' were urirefs, of course.)? Because I read that as saying > that my shoe size is ten. That is legal RDF/xml syntax (or rather: it corresponds to RDF/xml syntax in a way that the WG has agreed on), but the way you read it is exactly the issue we're debating. I read it as saying that something denoted by the uriref Pat is related by a relation denoted by the uriref shoeSize to a two character string '1' '0'. i.e. it corresponds to (shoeSize Pat "10") in KIF. The shoeSize relation might be defined in such a way that allows you to conlude that your shoesize is ten. [...] > >The usual interpretation of "10" -- e.g. in KIF -- is > >a string of two characters, no? I don't see what's unusal > >about what I'm suggesting. > > OK, Ive been assuming that the quote marks around literal labels are > only a syntactic device for marking them as literals, not intended to > be interpreted as actual quotation marks. They are an inheritance > from XML, right? Not in any particular way; n-triples syntax is independent from XML. > And XML is completely sloppy about use and mention, > and uses quotation syntax to mean all kinds of things. If we are > obliged to interpret those as genuine quote marks, we are not obliged > then I give up; > there is nothing to debate: all literals are character strings, end > of story. But then if I write > > Pat shoeSize "10" > > then I am saying that my shoe size is a character string, right? That's my suggestion. > From here on I will omit the double quotes to avoid confusion. er... huh? You'll have to tell me how your new syntax relates to RDF/xml syntax, then. [...] > >I don't see the simplicity anywhere. > > Well, I do. The motivating example for me was the use of range > information to fix a datatype, as in > > aaa shoeSize 10 . > shoeSize rdfs:Range xsd:integer . > > which seems to me to be eminently simple. That would be nifty if RDF/xml had such a syntax. I believe/suggest that it does not. So that example is irrelevant, from my perspective. [...] > >Yes, as I said, the mapping is unambiguous. This doesn't seem > >all that awkward to me. > > But if leading zeros are optional, the lexical-to-value mapping is > not invertible, so what is its inverse supposed to be? (a) as a relation, it *is* invertible; its inverse is not a function, but it's a well-defined relation. (b) if you need an inverse that's a function, the XML Schema spec does give a canonical lexical representation for each value. -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2001 11:35:28 UTC