Re: RDF Issue rdfms-literalsubjects

>From: "Pat Hayes" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
>
>>  Some people want tidy literal nodes. Some people want to allow
>>  'multiple' uses of literals.
>
>I wonder who in their right mind would use the same literal in the *same
>graph* to mean two different incompatible things.

I tend to agree, but I think it's more that some users want to be 
allowed to be sloppy and not care what their literals denote, but 
still have them checked for wellformedness relative to a datatype.

>....>
>  > Well no, because all you would have is the ability to talk about
>>  those character strings, not about what they might refer to. That's
>>  the cost of having tidy-literal graphs: it kind of forces you to lock
>>  down a single fixed global meaning for each literal.
>
>Ok, I see that now.  With the (current?) assumptions of the WG, apparently
>you have effectively eliminated the use of literals as subjects :(

Well, not "eliminated"; more "castrated".

>   I
>hesitate to mention, you could have gone ziggeing instead of zagging.   The
>WG could have used the literal subject as denoting values instead of
>lexical forms.

But what if the same node is a subject in one triple and an object in 
another? Hmmm, I guess that could still work, but I bet a lot of folk 
would find it very confusing. Eg someone might write

"345" ex:numberOfDigits "3" .

expecting the subject to be a string and the object to be a number, 
and wonder why it broke.

>This would have allowed moving the datatyping to the other
>side of the node, eliminating all the do-ce-doe with the extra Bnode, and
>allowing a more natural datatyping of the actual literal.

It would make the use of datatype properties to be more natural, yes, 
since then they would be the 'right way round' , ie from the literal 
to the value. We considered this, but it seemed like a small win for 
a potentially big cost, so we punted.

>....
>But I doubt anyone will want to take this seriously after all the vested
>effort the other way around.

Well, you never know, the next WG might see it with fresh eyes and 
naive enthusiasm. But indeed it will take a *lot* to convince us to 
re-open a closed decision. We have a gun to our heads to finish this 
ASAP.

Pat

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC					(850)434 8903   home
40 South Alcaniz St.			(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola,  FL 32501			(850)202 4440   fax
phayes@ai.uwf.edu 
http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes

Received on Monday, 25 February 2002 14:43:22 UTC