RE: XML literals

 

 -----Original Message----- 
 From: ext pat hayes [mailto:phayes@ihmc.us] 
 Sent: Fri 8/1/2003 11:34 PM 
 To: Stickler Patrick (NMP/Tampere) 
 Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org 
 Subject: Re: XML literals
 
 

  disjoint from the value space of any XML schema datatype (refer XSD)
   

  Debatable,


 I'm saying we are *defining* it this way. No debate is possible.
  

I mean, the claim is debatable -- and possibly harmful down the road. Obviously, if
the claim becomes part of the RDF spec, then insofar as the meaning of the spec is
concerned, it's not debatable.
 

   The exact nature of XML values is not specified.
   

   

  No. This bothers me. Alot.

   

  It is our responsibility to define what the values of XML Literals are.

  It's *our* datatype, and no'one else should have to define it,  or guess.

   


 Thats exactly what I am doing. Its OUR set, and we are saying that its not the same as any Unicode or XML Schema set. 
  

But saying what it is not is not the same thing as saying what it is, unless you exhaustively specify all the things in the universe that are not members of that set. Fine if you want to specify disjointedness with other sets, to be sure that it is clear, but those statements of disjointedness do not tell me what the value space actually contains, only what it doesn't (and I'm not fully convinced all those statements of disjointness are correct
or necessary.


 The problem with saying that it IS almost anything defined by someone else, is that we get into arcane debates about the exact edges of the identity criteria for those things. 
  

Fine, then we define it ourselves. Let the lexical form itself be the UTF8 encoded canonical form
(full Unicode support is provided by RDF/XML serialization and/or various editorial interfaces)
and XML literals are self denoting, just like plain literals. No need to map from Unicode to UTF8.
No need to posit a value space based on some other specification. They are exactly what they
are in the graph, and string equality provides for value comparison.
 
And being canonicalized XML fragments, implementors know what the values are and what to
do with them.


 I am surprised that you would object to the above on the grounds that we arent being honest, but you are willing to swallow the idea of an infoset. I have read this document more times than I want to admit, and I still have absolutely no idea what infosets ARE.  
  

I stand corrected. I was actually thinking about DOM-tree specific representations of Infosets, which is not at all the same thing, and was careless of me.
 
Patrick

Received on Monday, 4 August 2003 03:53:52 UTC