Re: Tidy literal nodes incompatable with current MT?

Patrick Stickler wrote:
> 
> It has occurred to me that tidy literal nodes seem incompatable
> with the view that a node in the graph maps to one and only one
> thing in the universe.
> 
> The reason why URI labeled nodes can be tidy is because URIs
> are globally unique, and URIs are presumed to have a consistent
> global meaning. But literals are like local names, and their
> meaning is dependent on context. Literals do not have a consistent
> global meaning.
> [...]

I understand that URIs are presumed to have a consistent global meaning.
Unfortunately, URIs are often used inconsistently. For example, a URL of
a homepage or an email address are frequently (mis)used as identifiers
for persons, and at the same time they identify homepages and email
addresses.

Therefore, I feel that the literals are the only truly reliable entities
in an RDF graph. Literals don't lie - their meaning is determined by
their content...

Sergey

Received on Monday, 4 February 2002 16:43:29 UTC