Re: Proposal (re rdfms-literal-is-xml-structure)

----- Original Message -----
From: "ext Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>
To: "Patrick Stickler" <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
Cc: "Brian McBride" <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>; <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>; "Martin
Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>; <w3c-i18n-ig@w3.org>
Sent: 10 July, 2003 20:34
Subject: Re: Proposal (re rdfms-literal-is-xml-structure)


> On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 10:02, Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:
> > OK folks,
> >
> > In the interests of satisfying all interested parties,
> > I offer the following proposal for an alternative
> > solution to the present one, based on nothing new,
> > just a partial roll back to a more traditional M&S
> > treatment of XML literals.
> >
> > Changes:
> [...most of this looks clear and straightforward...]
> > --
> >
> > All of the following:
> >
> > 4. <rdf:Description rdf:about="#x">
> >       <ex:foo rdf:parseType="Literal"><xhtml:b>bar</xhtml:b></ex:foo>
> >    </rdf:Description>
> >
> > 5. <rdf:Description rdf:about="#x">
> >       <ex:foo>&lt;xhtml:b&gt;bar&lt;/xhtml:b&gt;</ex:foo>
> >    </rdf:Description>
> >
> > 6. <rdf:Description rdf:about="#x"
ex:foo="&lt;xhtml:b&gt;bar&lt;/xhtml:b&gt;"/>
> >
> > generate the same triple:
> >
> >    <#x> ex:foo "<xhtml:b>bar</xhtml:b>"@fi .
>
> I'm uncomfortable with that... my strong intuition is that this
> loss of information is going to hurt.

It does indeed simplify the view of literals having XML markup.

The only issues that I have been able to think of are:

1. At present, one knows that any lexical form of type rdf:XMLLiteral
is a well formed XML fragment.

2. If RDF systems wish to re-serialize literals using parseType="Literal"
then each literal will need to be checked for well formedness.

Essentially what this means is that there are no longer any "XML literals"
per se, but only a means for serializing literals as XML, in the RDF/XML,
and that distinction is lost in the graph.

From a modelling perspective, that actually feels right, since the graph
is agnostic about the serialization used, there shouldn't necessarily be
any special distinction between literals with XML markup and literals
without XML markup in the graph, simply due to the fact that XML
is used for the official serialization syntax of a graph.

But I'm waiting anxiously to hear from the parser implementors.

From my position, as a consumer of RDF and RDF/XML, there
are no significant concerns to this loss of distinction.

Patrick


> Meanwhile, I've been aware of the issue for over a year...
> wow, more like two...
> http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-literal-is-xml-structure
>
> and I haven't developed any particular implementation experience
> that validates my intuition. cwm doesn't really grok
> parseType="Literal" at all, and it would probably be easier
> to support this interpretation of it. So I'm not in a position
> to object.
>
>
>
> --
> Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
>
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 11 July 2003 04:04:11 UTC