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

[...]
> Well, if "scoping" (a'la XTM, ISO Topic Maps) were added as
> a primitive feature of the graph, rather than having to resort
> to typed anonymous nodes, then one could see data typing of
> literal values as just a scope, like any other qualification.

Where in any of the RDF specifications does it say that Literals are typed
anonymous nodes? RDF Core don't seem to have decided what to use rdf:value
for yet, so it can't be in the specification as "lexical representation
of".

But I agree that people seem to be leaning in that direction, including
myself.

   :Sean :name "Sean" .

becomes:-

   :Sean :name _:sean .
   _:sean rdf:value (s:U0063 s:U0065 s:U0061 s:U006E) .
   _:sean rdf:type :Name .

and therefore, I guess:-

   rdf:value rdfs:range str:String .

but I don't think there's any point in actually implementing it that way.
People will always just use "Sean" as a literal identifier, without
expanding it into a bNode, and there's no way to give a label to a bNode in
XML RDF anyway. So this method is a piece of theoretical pedantry, IMO.
It's quite accpetable to have a literal refered to only in using it, i.e.
there is no conceivable situation that I can think of that would merit the
anon node solution, other than to satisfy some theoretical bug.

> Still, wherever one defines the data type of a literal, it
> results in the same amount of information: a data type
> identifier, and a literal value.

Yep.

> [...] I think I'd prefer having a centralized authority such as
> IETF, W3C, IEEE, ISO, etc. defining most of my data types, eh?

For the base datatypes? Yes, I would. And, lo and behold, they already
have:-

   http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

Cheers,

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 16:38:50 UTC