Re: Proposals for changes to current datatyping spec

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ext Jan Grant" <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
To: "Patrick Stickler" <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
Cc: "w3c-rdfcore-wg" <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
Sent: 05 September, 2002 12:52
Subject: Re: Proposals for changes to current datatyping spec


> 
> On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Patrick Stickler wrote:
> 
> [explanation cut]
> 
> > Is that any clearer?
> 
> Your point of view is explicitly clear; however, I don't consider the
> situation it describes to be "clear". I'll shut up though because I want
> to hear what others have to say on this.

Fair enough. And sorry about any remaining unclarity, wherever it
may be.

> >
> > > ... which is why I suggested Datatype is a superfluous extension
> > > (particularly since it seems that all literals should carry a type, but
> > > I don't wish to descend into "dogmatic assertions" here :-) )
> >
> > I agree fully that all literals should carry a type, explicit or implicit,
> > and this is the untidy view. Or rather, to avoid an untidy treatment,
> > we'd the need to disallow inlined literals entirely, making all literals
> > typed literal nodes.
> 
> Yes, I like two of the the options you outlined in the appendixes for
> treatment of inline literals - either pick a "default" type (which is
> ugly but easy) or use the untidy "mutable type" option, which I find
> quite compelling, although I confess I've not looked closely at
> technical consequences.

Well, having a default type is either non-monotonic, if we allow later
schema assertions to change it, or is rather fragile process-wise, 
requiring great care in the order in which schemas are loaded into
the knowledge base. Either case is IMO unacceptable for real
world use (even if it technically could be made to work).

Having the implicit datatype denoted by a system identifier, similar
to bnode identifiers, seems a very elegant and clear way to model
literals as contextual names.

Of course, that presumes we *are* modelling them as contextual
names, which of course is the crux of the whole untidy/tidy debate,
whether inline literals are global names or contextual names...

Patrick

Received on Thursday, 5 September 2002 06:15:29 UTC