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

>At 11:02 12/02/2002 +0200, Patrick Stickler wrote:
>[...]
>
>>  >> A literal is not a pair ("string", "lang"). The M&S is wrong.
>>>
>>>  I was hoping for something a little more compelling than a bald assertion.
>>
>>Umm.. the assertion was associated with a good bit of
>>explanation, both here and elsewhere.
>
>Chapeau at a rakish angle (i.e. part on, part off)
>
>Let me frame this discussion a little, and declare an interest.  I 
>have running, publicly available code with a user base.  The code 
>has evolved a lot over the past months, but I and the Jena team have 
>worked hard to maintain its external interfaces so that the running 
>code of our user base would not suddenly break.
>
>I read M&S and it said that language is part of the literal, so that 
>is how I wrote the code.  In Jena, a literal is a pair, as defined 
>in M&S.

Well, Brian, surely you might have mentioned this before, when the 
datatyping discussion was in full progress, all predicated on the 
assumption (and indeed the frequent explicit assertion, to which 
nobody raised the slightest objection) that literals were strings. If 
literals are not strings, then we have to go and do all that again, 
because NONE of it makes any sense at all. What is the result of 
applying the lexical-to-value mapping of xsd:number to the pair 
("34", "french") ? Is it the pair (34, "french" ) ? What would that 
mean ?

>The Jena team is committed to modifying Jena to track the decisions 
>of the WG.  Whatever decision the WG makes on this issue, we will 
>implement.  However, I would ask the WG, whether they feel that they 
>would owe me, and other developers, an explanation for why, having 
>gone to the trouble of implementing the spec correctly, we should be 
>asked to change our code.
>
>To be clear Patrick,  I have not seen anything in what you have 
>written that  comes close to an explanation of why this change would 
>be a good thing.  If there is something I have missed, then could I 
>trouble you please to repeat it, or to provide a reference.  I am 
>entirely open to being persuaded by good reasons.  However, I do not 
>consider, "because Patrick says so" to be a good reason.
>
>A good reason might have the form "If we do it as m&s says, problem x occurs".

Well, one problem for us is that we will have to re-open the 
datatyping discussion again from square one. For example, if literals 
can be pairs, then we could put the datatype name in the second slot 
of the pair, - a solution which I believe was considered, but 
rejected on the grounds that literals were NOT pairs, as I recall.

Pat

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC					(850)434 8903   home
40 South Alcaniz St.			(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola,  FL 32501			(850)202 4440   fax
phayes@ai.uwf.edu 
http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2002 11:25:21 UTC