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

>At 09:02 12/02/2002 +0200, Patrick Stickler wrote:
>
>>Yes and no. If what M&S says applies only to the XML space,
>>then no. If what M&S says was supposed to apply to the RDF
>>space (have representation in the graph) then yes.
>
>Patrick, can you refer me to where in M&S it suggests this 
>interpretation?  How do you reconcile this position with the text 
>from M&S that Dave quoted earlier:
>
> 
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-archive/2001Jun/att-0017/01-rdfms.html#221
>
>[[ (P221) The xml:lang attribute may be used as defined by [XML] to 
>associate a language with the property value. There is no specific 
>data model representation for xml:lang (i.e., it adds no triples to 
>the data model); the language of a literal is considered by RDF to 
>be a part of the literal. An application may ignore language tagging 
>of a string. All RDF applications must specify whether or not 
>language tagging in literals is significant; that is, whether or not 
>language is considered when performing string matching or other 
>processing.]]
>
>in particular:
>
>   [[the language of a literal is considered by RDF to be a part of 
>the literal]]

That could be given many interpretations. It seems to me that if the 
M&S authors had intended this to mean that a literal had two 
components, they could have said that explicitly. My own reading of 
that sentence is that the language is considered to be implicit in 
the string, rather in the way that a poet might say that his language 
is part of his art.

The last sentence cited suggests to me that language-specificity is 
considered to be included in the notion of string matching, so that 
string-matching might (or might not) be language-sensitive; but that 
once that is determined, the RDF treats literals as strings relative 
to that notion of 'same string'.

Pat
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Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2002 12:40:28 UTC