- From: Drew McDermott <drew.mcdermott@yale.edu>
- Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 17:26:20 -0400 (EDT)
- To: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
[Patrick Stickler] > > I would myself love to see a data type URI approach by which > > otherwise "literal" values could be defined as instances of a > > given data type URI. E.g. > > > > dt:integer:5 > > dt:token:en > > dt:date:2001-09-27 > > dt:time:2000-11-01T17:32:20Z > > dt:float:38829.11883292 > > ... > > So would I... Anyone else think this would be a good idea to pursue? Yes, although it's not clear to me how we are to interpret dt:date:2001-09-27. Is the idea that 'date' is a resource (namespace? URI?) identifying a convention for how the literal is to be parsed and internalized? Also, as written literals can't include spaces. The literal should be enclosed in doublequotes, with a universal convention about how to put unusual characters (such as " itself) inside doublequotes. The good thing about this proposal is that it doesn't commit anyone to a universal literal-syntax scheme, although all the obvious data types should have standard encodings. The other good thing is that it isn't the current system, which I find baffling most of the time, and clumsy on those occasions when I imagine I understand it. The proposal seems to entail that literals name resources after all. This strikes me as correct, and I have trouble understanding why DAML+OIL embodies the opposite intuition. I thought everything was a resource. If so, then it from the fact that literals are names of things, it follows pretty trivially that literals are names of resources. (I can never remember if "resource" means the thing or its name, and the same for "literal," so if I've gotten it wrong please revise the paragraph accordingly.) -- Drew McDermott
Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 17:26:23 UTC