RE: Literals (Re: model theory for RDF/S)

> >Taking that a step further, if everyone used resources rather
> >than literals, then, logically, there would not be any need for
> >special treatment of literals in the MT. Right?
> >
> >*** Disclaimer: I'm not proposing doing away with literals! Though
> >*** I'm perhaps using that as a way to explore the relation between
> >*** URI labled resources and literal "resources" in general.
> 
> Oh, go on, propose it. Someone needs to start the ball rolling :-)

What, and become even more of an unpopular trouble maker?! 
I fear the ball may get rolled back on top of me...  ;-)

> >What I'm not clear on is what you feel is being lost by using
> >a URI to represent a typed data value rather than a literal.
> >I.e., how does using an approach such as '#a #b int:5 .' lose
> >anything in comparison to '#a #b "5" .' per se?  Does not the
> >URI form provide greater potential for defining or inferring
> >knowledge about the value?
> 
> ... My understanding of the 
> proposal was that the syntactic encoding of, say, integers implicit 
> in the notion of literal was to be abandoned and replaced by an 
> assertional encoding in RDF triples. 

But there isn't any "syntactic encoding of integers" for any particular
data type, right? That's where I'm getting confused. I see that the
use of a typed data value URI in place of an untyped literal string 
neither increases or decreases the knowledge at the RDF level -- since
RDF at that level treats both URIs and literals as opaque. And if one
goes to interpret those labels, only the URI has inherent data type
knowledge. I don't see how there is any "implicit" knowledge about 
integers in a given literal string "5". Sure, you can associate a
type via a typed anonymous node, but that is completely external
knowledge insofar as the literal is concerned. Or am I completely 
missing something? (again ;-)

> That may be a good idea, but it 
> does potentially throw away a lot of valuable properties implicit in 
> the syntactic typing of literals. 

I guess I don't really follow what you mean by syntactic typing of 
literals and what that buys us, in general. I may just be looking
to closely...

> >Granted, in order to have "extra" knowledge about the actual
> >data type used, we need to either interpret the URI scheme (which
> >is outside the scope of the MT) or employ mechanisms such as
> >the (now unfortunately deprecated) rdf:aboutEachPrefix, e.g.
> 
> If aboutEachPrefix was only used in this way it wouldnt be so bad, 
> but it got all mixed up with containers.

Could not one decouple its troublesome use with containers yet
retain it for useful stuff like making statements about all instances
of a given URI scheme?

Cheers,

Patrick

--
Patrick Stickler                      Phone:  +358 3 356 0209
Senior Research Scientist             Mobile: +358 50 483 9453
Nokia Research Center                 Fax:    +358 7180 35409
Visiokatu 1, 33720 Tampere, Finland   Email:  patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 06:31:17 UTC