Re: XML observation

>Hello Graham,
>
>At 10:54 03/07/07 +0100, Graham Klyne wrote:
>>Well said, Pat!
>>
>>I've been mulling how to say something very similar to this myself, 
>>without appearing to be destructive.  Roughly, we seem to have two 
>>viewpoints:
>>- XML is text-with-markup
>>- XML is a generic presentation framework for arbitrary data
>>and these two goals are not always compatible.
>
>Yes indeed. Please note that the inclusion in RDF of literals with
>XML was mainly if not solely for the first puprose; for arbitrary
>data structures, RDF has better things available.
>[I'm not sure I agree with your 'presentation framework' point,
>but that's a separate issue that we don't need to pursue here.]
>
>>I think we are seeing a fault line in RDF design caused by the 
>>tensions of trying to make XML serve different masters.  (I am 
>>wondering if there isn't an issue here that shouldn't be raised 
>>with TAG, to clarify the role of XML in web architecture, per the 
>>options above.)
>>
>>For a design as (hopefully) fundamental as RDF, I don't think it's 
>>a (long term) viable option to just paper over the cracks.  I have 
>>always been a strong proponent of Pat's "view G" of graphs:  RDF as 
>>just another flavour of XML doesn't hang together in my view.
>
>RDF is not another flavor of XML. But we need to be able to have
>XML as literals, as an extension of plain literals, for i18n.

Can you expand on that point? WHY does i18n require RDF to have a 
distinctive XML literal type? And since you want XML literals to be 
an extension of plain literals, why not use plain literals?

What would break if someone used plain literals to represent XML 
markup? The 'plainness' doesn't prevent them containing markup: it 
just says that the RDF treats them as character strings, so it would 
be up to a suitable application to check them for XML properties. But 
this functionality has to be provided somehow, even for XML literals.

>And the inclusion of XML literals in RDF is not a mistake, it's
>important for i18n reasons. I feel it's terribly sad that this
>gets ignored here time and again.

Again, can you explain this in more detail?

That is, I can see the general utility in having XML literals as a 
distinctive type, though I think its merits are often overstated. 
What I cannot see is why this is of *particular* significance to 
i18n. In fact, I cannot see why RDF in itself is of particular 
significance to i18n at all, any more than, say, Javascript or LISP 
would be.

What am I missing? What internationalization issues arise at the 
level of the RDF graph syntax?

Pat Hayes
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Received on Tuesday, 8 July 2003 16:33:24 UTC