RE: Proposed NTriples changes for literal notation

This dead horse is making a good living out of being flogged... I just 
thought I'd say that I happen to agree with Jeremy about this.  Ho hum.

Except that I'd view Tim's example slightly differently under this approach:

   Jenny ex:age "35"en-US .

<==>

   Jenny ex:age _:x .
   _:x lang:en_US "35" .

and maybe:

   lang:en_US rdfs:subPropertyOf rdfs:dlex .

#g
--

At 09:48 AM 3/15/02 +0000, Jeremy Carroll wrote:

>Tim:
> > > > I hope that RDF will move toward unicode strings as primitives, and
> > > > langauges as properties.  { "chat"en  =  [lang:en "chat"].}
> > >
> > > This would, of course, require untidy literals, and we just decided
> > > to make literals tidy.
> > >
> > > If languages as properties, in conjuction with literals as subjects,
> > > is truly is a desirable feature in the future, should we rethink tidy
> > > literals?
> > >
> > > If literals remain tidy, then that closes the door on languages
> > > as properties.
> >
> > There must be some other assumption here; because we *can* have tidy
> > literals and { "chat"en  =  [lang:en "chat"].} and not use literals as
> > subjects just by letting the xml:lang attribute entail the extra Bnode.
> >
>
>Sorry I am flogging a dead horse.
>
>Maybe, but using Tim's encoding (which I like), would be a lot easier if we
>had chosen to follow Pat's
>
>http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/users/phayes/simpledatatype2.html
>
>instead of lumbering him with a specific reading for the S-B idiom.
>
> >From simpledatatype2:
>
>[[[
>Thus, a triple such as
>
>Jenny ex:age "35" .
>
>in effect means that the value of the property is something that can be
>indicated by the literal label. RDFS provides a way to say this explicitly:
>
>Jenny ex:age _:x .
>_:x rdfs:dlex "35" .
>
>where the second triple asserts simply that _:x is a value which can be
>represented by the character string. This does not in itself 'fix' the
>value, of course, but it can be used as a way of making the association
>between the value and a lexical form explicit, for later use or
>amplification. We will call this a lexical form triple. A useful way to
>think of the meaning of rdfs:dlex is: "..can be described by the character
>string.." or "..can be a value of the literal..."
>
>These two forms - the single triple with a literal as object, and the
>similar triple with a bnode as object, together with a lexical form triple
>linking the bnode to the literal - are identical in meaning and can be
>substituted freely for one another. The first is obviously more compact and
>often easier to 'read', but the second form provides distinct nodes for the
>literal itself and for its value, which is sometimes useful.
>
>]]]
>
>One time useful is to encode language.
>
>e.g.
>
>
>Jenny ex:age "35"en-US .
>
><==>
>
>Jenny ex:age _:x .
>_:x rdfs:dlex "35" .
>_:x rdfs:lang "en_US" .
>
>
>Flogging a dead horse
>
>Jeremy

-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK@NineByNine.org>

Received on Friday, 15 March 2002 07:21:30 UTC