- From: Waggy <waggy@yahoo.com>
- Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:22:03 -0800 (PST)
- To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
- Cc: Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hpl.hp.com>
Thank-you, Jeremy Carrol, for finding this namespace; I agree the topicmap document is more useful for country codes. So I suppose it would be correct to use the URI representing the country as the subject of RDF statements. <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <rdf:Description about="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#NU"> <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">NIUE</rdfs:label> <rdfs:label xml:lang="fr">NIUÉ</rdfs:label> </rdf:Description </rdf:RDF> This is good. Now, after scrutinizing the rights statement in the topicmap documents for identifying countries and languages, I think it would even be acceptable to use the following language URIs, though there is no guarantee topicmaps.org will formally define them the same. For the Acoli language, for which there is no topicmap identifier and no ISO 2-letter code, though there is a 3-letter code: http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#ach And, for Klingon, using the acceptable xml:lang value defined by IANA: http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#i-klingon The point is to be allowed by the namespace owner to excercise the 'X' in 'XML' when needed.* This is not necessarily a Good Thing for all controlled vocabularies, but for many it is. (Think about historians who want to talk about country:US-D1803-04-30.) Ideally, the namespace owner will maintain the document, keeping it current and encouraging feedback. One may find, for example, the concepts of, "language unknown", "language not specified", and perhaps even, "human-readable-but-not-really-in-any-language" (for some symbols, acronyms, and suchlike) may be useful enough to be formally identified, perhaps in the same namespace. -David *See http://prismstandard.org/Pam_1.0/PRISM_1.2h.pdf for what looks like a very useful set of controlled vocabularies with extension within their namespaces explicitly prohibited. They even define URLs based on ISO-3166 for use as identifiers for countries with the cryptic footnote, "These URLs are non-resolvable for copyright reasons." --- Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hpl.hp.com> wrote: > > Patrick: > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=geolang > > > Look in the documents section for language.xtm and country.xtm. > > Just to unpack an entry: > > <topic id="NU"> > <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#country"/></instanceOf> > <subjectIdentity> > <subjectIndicatorRef > xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#NU"/> > <subjectIndicatorRef > xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#N-570"/> > <subjectIndicatorRef > xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#A3-NIU"/> > </subjectIdentity> > <baseName><scope><subjectIndicatorRef > xlink:href="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/language.xtm#en"/></scope> > <baseNameString>NIUE</baseNameString></baseName> > <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha2"/></scope> > <baseNameString>NU</baseNameString></baseName> > <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha3"/></scope> > <baseNameString>NIU</baseNameString></baseName> > </topic> > > > This seems to suggest the use of any of three URIs > http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#NU > http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#N-570 > http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm#A3-NIU > > For the country whose name is written in English as > NIUE > > and who has two and three letter abbreviations of NU and NIU. > > If I actually retrieve http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm I > get > different data :( > > > <topic id="NU"> > <instanceOf><topicRef xlink:href="#country-name"/></instanceOf> > <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha2"/></scope> > <baseNameString>NU</baseNameString></baseName> > <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="#alpha3"/></scope> > <baseNameString>NIU</baseNameString></baseName> > <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="language.xtm#en"/></scope> > <baseNameString>Niue</baseNameString></baseName> > <baseName><scope><topicRef xlink:href="language.xtm#en"/> > <topicRef xlink:href="#uppercase"/></scope> > <baseNameString>NIUE</baseNameString></baseName> > </topic> > > Having "Niue" in the standard capitalization is helpful. > I guess having a choice of three URIs may be an improvement, although I > suspect having just one is better. All in all I take the current > contents > of > http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm > to be more useful than > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/1442/country.xtm > > Oops I reread > > http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/identitycrisis.html > > and see I have completely missed the point about subject identifiers > etc. Yes > that point is well-made - but it is not that subject identifiers are so > good > that we need three of them! And omitting the mixed case version of the > label > does appear to be a bug. > > Jeremy > > > > > Jeremy > > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
Received on Wednesday, 7 January 2004 03:22:07 UTC