Re: xml:lang [was Re: Outstanding Issues ]

On 2002-02-12 20:00, "ext Brian McBride" <bwm@HPLB.HPL.HP.COM> wrote:


> Patrick, what triples do you propose be generated for:
> 
>  <rdf:Description>
>     <ex:foo xml:lang="en">foo</ex:foo>
>  </rdf:Description>

If we *have* to generate triples (and I would argue that
forcing the generation of triples before "fixing" the serialization,
which has enough problems, is asking for trouble) then

   _:1 ex:foo _:2 .
   _:2 rdf:value "foo" .
   _:2 xml:lang "en" .

The problem with this, is that xml:lang is likely to have a
range such as xsd:lang, and thus what we really need/want is

   _:1 ex:foo _:2 .
   _:2 rdf:value "foo" .
   _:2 xml:lang _:3 .
   _:3 rdf:value "en" .
   _:3 rdf:dtype xsd:lang .

or alternately

   _:1 ex:foo _:2 .
   _:2 rdf:value "foo" .
   _:2 xml:lang _:3 .
   _:3 rdf:value "en" .

presuming elsewhere

   xml:lang rdfs:range xsd:lang .

In either case, it means that the parser needs RDF knowledge
in order to recognize xml:lang as having a datatype range
and generate the appropriate idiom in the graph.

The problem, I think, is a syntactic one, not a logical one
or any problem with the datatyping methodology.

The structured literal (or even URI encoded literal) approach
is clearly easier -- though not necessarily better.

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Wednesday, 13 February 2002 06:41:15 UTC