RE: I18N Issue alternative: a passing thought.

>  > -----Original Message-----
>>  From: ext pat hayes [mailto:phayes@ihmc.us]
>>  Sent: 18 September, 2003 20:24
>>  To: Stickler Patrick (NMP-MSW/Tampere)
>>  Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
>>  Subject: Re: I18N Issue alternative: a passing thought.
>>
>>
>>
>>  >It does offer a few benefits. Two significant
>>  >changes are that it would
>>  >require equality of values, even plain literals, to
>>  >be defined by rule, rather than node equality
>>  >in the graph syntax.
>>
>>  ? No, I don't think so. That is, each node will denote a single
>>  value. Of course two different nodes could denote the same value, but
>>  then that is already the case and has always been.  Even in our
>>  present design, there is nothing to stop a bnode denoting the same
>>  thing as a literal.
>
>But you have to look at statements *about* those bnodes to
>determine what those values are, not at the node (or node
>label) itself.

True. But then you have to do that generally in RDF, right?

>Thus, equality is based on some rule that equates constellations
>of statements in the graph with each other, not nodes based
>on their expression alone in the abstract graph syntax.

Well, true, for bnodes: but that has always been true. The literals 
themselves however can have their identity checked by string matching 
on their form.

I see what you are getting at, I think: in our current design, all 
the information to check identity of typed literals is right there in 
the literal, whereas in this design there aren't any typed literals, 
only bnodes, and you have to go look in the graph for the datatype 
information. True.

>
>>  >It would also make literal values untidy
>>
>>  The bnodes (or URIs ) are just as tidy as the rest of the graph.
>
>Eh? What?
>
>Are you telling me that
>
><rdf:Description rdf:about="#foo">
>    <ex:bar rdf:datatype="&xsd;integer">10</ex:bar>
>    <ex:bar rdf:datatype="&xsd;integer">10</ex:bar>
></rdf:Description>
>
>is going to map to
>
>    <#foo> ex:bar _:g .
>    <#foo> ex:boo _:g .
>    _:g xsd:int "10" .
>
>merging the value nodes because they denote the same value,
>rather than
>
>    <#foo> ex:bar _:g .
>    <#foo> ex:boo _:k .
>    _:g xsd:int "10" .
>    _:k xsd:int "10" .
>
>???
>
>I think the latter is what we'd have to get,

Yes

>since otherwise,
>it demands that RDF parsers fully grok every single datatype
>encountered in the RDF/XML, and the latter is most certainly
>*not* tidy.

Well, it is a tidy graph: each bnode and literal is a unique node in 
the graph (that graph has 4 nodes and 4 arcs, arranged like a 
horizontal diamond with #foo at one end and "10" at the other). But 
the proposal breaks when you want to have English and French versions 
of "chat".

Pat


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Received on Friday, 19 September 2003 12:57:58 UTC