Re: xml:lang and XML infoset: two new datatypes

I've tried to make the following point before, and will try again.

The datatype of a literal is disjunct from any xml:lang 
attribution, and a literal can be specified for both. E.g.

   xsd:string"This string is not a valid token."-en
   xsd:token"moi"-fi

Thus, it is not always the case that the datatype for language
qualified literals is xsd:string. It may be some subtype of
xsd:string or other string type, and the specific datatype
is of course significant.

And although the xml:lang does not affect the L2V mapping
and is ignored by the datatyping machinery, it still is
relevant to applications.

It must then be possible to specify both datatype and
xml:lang for a given literal.

Patrick
   
Patrick

_____________Original message ____________
Subject:	xml:lang and XML infoset: two new datatypes
Sender:	ext Sergey Melnik <melnik@db.stanford.edu>
Date:		Sat, 21 Sep 2002 11:46:25 +0300


I'm suggesting to treat strings with xml:lang specifiers as a new 
datatype (call it "language-tagged string"), disjoint with xsd:string. 
Similarly, XML infosets should simply be yet another datatype, disjoint 
with any other XSD datatype.

These two datatypes were essentially defined as such in the original RDF 
spec. Now that we have a general-purpose datatyping mechanism, we can 
make use of it. The two datatypes should get their own URIs.

If there is enough support for that, I'd like to put the above point for 
vote at the next telecon.

The current proposal for representing typed values in the abstract 
syntax (URI + string) fails for the above datatypes. Therefore, I'm also 
suggesting that this overspecification is not required. In the abstract 
syntax, typed literals may be kept as opaque constants, whereas the 
applications may use their internal representation of choice.

Sergey

Received on Saturday, 21 September 2002 06:01:58 UTC