Re: literal value terminology (was: Re: Review of MT)

>....>
>>  Since this whole "literal" terminology is so confusing, I think it
>>  would be safest to avoid the use of simple unqualified terms
>>  altogether. Let me therefore modify my suggestion to the following,
>>  which is more longwinded (and less 'orthogonal') but has the merit of
>>  making everything very clear:
>>
>>  I(URI) = I(uriref) = resource  (ie same as present)
>>  I(literal token) = datatype value
>>
>>  This keeps "literal"  completely outside any semantic domain, and
>>  also emphasizes even to the casual reader the token/value
>>  distinction; and it has the advantage, already noted, of being
>>  consistent with DAML terminology at the semantic level.
>>
>>  OK with that?
>>
>>  Pat
>
>You know, I still would not use "datatype value". We kind of agreed to
>use the terms "value spaces" and "lexical spaces" in datatyping such
>that lexical spaces are subsets of what is currently called set of
>"literal values".

Oh dear, I hope we have not agreed to do that. That would put lexical 
items into the semantic domain. This seems to be getting *extremely* 
confused (and confusing). My basic understanding is that the terms 
"lexical space" and "value space" refer respectively to syntactic and 
semantic kinds of things. (Of course, since the latter include 
strings, one can use them to encode syntax; but the conceptual 
distinction still remains.

>It seems more natural to baptize the elements of the
>value spaces of datatypes as "datatype values"...

Right; and since all literals need a datatyping scheme to have their 
denotations specified (right?) , those semantic values will of 
necessity be datatype values (no?).

>
>My counterproposal is just
>
>I(literal token) = literal value

Sigh. The problem is that this is where we came in. Patrick was 
honestly confused by the use of "literal value" in precisely this way 
in the current MT, so I was looking for an alternative that would be 
completely unambiguous.

Pat

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Received on Tuesday, 22 January 2002 17:02:20 UTC