Re: Some (more) thoughts on literals and language and XML

----- Original Message -----
From: "ext Graham Klyne" <gk@ninebynine.org>
To: <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
Sent: 11 July, 2003 15:06
Subject: Some (more) thoughts on literals and language and XML


> ...Patrick's (first) proposal [2] ...
> ... satisfies the essential I18N requirements, in
> that it removes any artificial distinction between literals with markup
and
> literals without markup ...

I'm not sure if this is an actual requirement. In fact, Martin's recent
comments in
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Jul/0145.html seem
to indicate that removing of this distinction is in fact considered
undesirable:

[
   ... I think it collapses two things that should
   be distinct: Strings that happen to look like XML fragments, and
   strings that are actually XML fragments. XML makes a clear distinction
   between these, but the above would blur this distinction. It would
   most probably lead to a great deal of confusion among a wide range
   of users. It would also not help with a natural transition from
   'plain' to 'xml' literals.  ...
]

Only the second proposal (Alternative 2) seems to meet both of
the features that I understand Martin and the I18N WG to be
wanting:

1. The possibility to associate lang tags via xml:lang with XML encoded
    literals.

2. A distinction in the graph between "true" XML literals and strings that
simply
    look like XML literals.

The cost of alternative 2, though, is so high at this point that I really
don't see it as a true alternative.

Patrick

Received on Friday, 11 July 2003 09:38:50 UTC