Re: A collection of issue resolutions

On 2002-02-12 21:05, "ext Brian McBride" <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com> wrote:


> rdfms-literalsubjects: Should the subjects of RDF statements be allowed to
> be literals?
> 
> I suggest that changing the RDF/XML syntax to support this is out of charter.
> 
> Propose
> 
>  o the WG resolves that the current syntaxes (RDF/XML, n-triples, graph
> syntax) do not allow literals as subjects.

Fine.

>  o the WG notes that it is aware of no reason why literals should not be
> resources and a future WG with a less restrictive charter may extend the
> syntaxes to allow literals as the subjects of statements.

Not fine. There are very real reasons (now) why they should not.

If literals become tidy, then literals cannot be subjects. Literals
themselves do not denote resources. Literals, in conjunction with
some context such as datatype or other qualification may participate
in the denotation of a resource, but they themselves do not denote
the resource (if they are tidy).

If we want to allow the literal node to denote the
resource, by hanging all those qualifications off the literal node
so that the literal node becomes a literal-in-context, which denotes
a resource, then the literal node also denotes the context/occurrence
of that literal, and thus literals cannot be tidy.

This was one of the key hot-issues in the recent tidy/untidy debates
and I tried to point out the ramification that adopting tidy literals
precluded literals as subjects (the P++ idiom).

If this still isn't clear, let me know and I'll keep trying...

Cheers,

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 09:07:16 UTC