rdf:value and Dumb-down.

Hi.

I was thinking about the use of rdf:value for "dumb-down".

Dumb down takes statements:
<A> <b> <C> .
<C> <rdf:value> "x" .

and infers (in the loosest sense of the word):

<A> <b> "x" .

The idea being that the application that makes use of this either can't
handle <C> or that <C> exists only to allow one to encode the RDF/XML in
such a way that if embedded into HTML a non-RDF/XML aware browser won't
mistakenly render it.

As such it is honest about being imperfect. But the ill-defined nature of
the relationship between the first two statements, and the statement
inferred is irritating, and could lead to problems down the line. It can't
be fitted into the MT, or similar.

One idea that occurred to me is that there might be some value in generating
the third "dumbed-down" triple, and then use reification to indicate how we
arrive at it, hence resulting in the following triples

_:v1 <rdf:type> <rdf:Statement> .
_:v1 <rdf:subject> <A> .
_:v1 <rdf:predicate> <b> .
_:v1 <rdf:object> <C> .
_:v2 <rdf:type> <rdf:Statement> .
_:v2 <rdf:subject> <C> .
_:v2 <rdf:predicate> <rdf:value> .
_:v2 <rdf:object> "x" .
_:s1 <rdf:type> <rdf:Statement> .
_:s1 <rdf:subject> <A> .
_:s1 <rdf:predicate> <b> .
_:s1 <rdf:object> "x" .
_:r1 <rdf:type> <rdf:Bag> .
_:r1 <rdf:_1> _:v1 .
_:r1 <rdf:_2> _:v2 .
_:r1 <xx:suggests> _:s1 .

Does anyone else see any value to this?


Jon Hanna

PGP http://www.spin.ie/jon.asc
PGP Fingerprint 707E 5E39 3BF5 533A D1DD  2083 8169 BFD7 F532 BD18
"...it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment
failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt

Received on Friday, 22 November 2002 08:33:10 UTC