Re: a cunning plan (was: Re: On Consensus)

[Patrick Stickler, Nokia/Finland, (+358 40) 801 9690, patrick.stickler@nokia.com]


----- Original Message -----
From: "ext Jan Grant" <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
To: "Patrick Stickler" <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
Cc: "Frank Manola" <fmanola@mitre.org>; "bwm" <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>; "ext pat hayes" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>; "w3c-rdfcore-wg"
<w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
Sent: 27 September, 2002 12:44
Subject: Re: a cunning plan (was: Re: On Consensus)


> On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Patrick Stickler wrote:
>
> >
> > > This also lets a Dan C. protect his turf if he wants to stop people
> > > drawing the wrong conclusions about his literals, because he could say
> >
> > Anyone who wants to play on their own turf and work in a closed
> > system are free to use whatever MT they like, but RDF is for
> > global *interchange* of knowledge between widely disparate
> > systems, and as such should embody as completely and explicitly
>                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > as possible the intended meaning of the asserted statements.
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> That is true, and the way to do that seems to use datatyped literals, to
> deprecate "bare" literals and to get Winston to tippex out their
> existence.

I've suggested that myself before, but the reality is that inline
literals are already used with value-based semantics, and it's
highly unlikely, nor at all IMO reasonable, to expect those
applications or models to have to change.

And folks who are presuming string interpretations of inline literals
can continue to do so even with an untidy MT by simply being explicit
in the RDF which properties take string values as objects.

Inline literals are not going away. Tidy semantics will likely
result in non-monotonicity and/or a schism in the community, while
untidy semantics with string range assertions let's us have our cake
and eat it too.

Is the better choice really so unclear?

Patrick

Received on Friday, 27 September 2002 05:59:18 UTC