RE: Alternative representation of typed literal nodes in NTriples (and N3)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Jan Grant [mailto:Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk]
> Sent: 23 August, 2002 14:30
> To: Stickler Patrick (NRC/Tampere)
> Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg
> Subject: RE: Alternative representation of typed literal nodes in
> NTriples (and N3)
> 
> 
> On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:
> 
> > > How are you disposed towards (datatype, stuff) where 
> stuff may or may
> > > not be further structured?
> >
> > If 'stuff' constitutes (or contains) in some explicit 
> fashion a lexical
> > representation which is interpreted in terms of that datatype, sure.
> 
> I'm sorry if this is nit-picking; conceptually, it seems 
> easier to deal
> with each literal as a member of its datatype, not carrying an
> accumulation of cruft that's leaked from the representations of other
> DTs.

I don't really follow what you are saying.

Are you talking about the XML bit and language code? Or something else?

The the unicode string portion of a literal, as literals are presently
defined, without the XML bit and language code, is a member of the
lexical space of a datatype, and within the context of that datatype
serves as a local name for the value in question. There is a strong
correlation between namespace+name in XML and datatype+lexicalForm in
RDF datatyping. Both have local names which must be interpreted within
a given "namespace".

Yes, it would be cleaner, I agree, to just have the string and not
the other 'cruft' that is residue from the RDF/XML, but I don't think
it's all that horrible to have it there either, so long as it is clear
that it has no relevance to the semantics of RDF datatyping.

Patrick

Received on Friday, 23 August 2002 08:29:03 UTC