RE: Let's get the Literals out of the RDF Graph

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Sandro Hawke [mailto:sandro@w3.org]
> Sent: 05 October, 2001 19:01
> To: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> Subject: Let's get the Literals out of the RDF Graph
> 
> 
> It seems to me that literals simply have no place in the RDF graph or
> the model theory.  Literals are only an issue for RDF Graph encoding
> languages like RDF/XML or RDF/N-Triples.
> 
> A parser for RDF/XML should map a string literal into an unlabeled
> node about which it adds the same information as the literal text
> conveyed, namely that it is a sequence of unicode characters, and
> which characters are in that sequence.  A generator for RDF/XML should
> look for nodes about which it has this information and output them as
> string literals.  Parser and generators should behave similarly with
> XML/infoset literals, whatever they turn out to be.  
> 
> We obviously have to pick the node labels which will be used to
> describe these things, of course, if we want our parsers and encoding
> languages to be interoperable.  I've put together a rough ontology for
> this, living at its namespace: "http://www.w3.org/2001/10/05-string".
> 
> Isn't this a lot cleaner?
>  
>      -- sandro

Forgive me for perhaps being just a bit daft here, but what is
the utility of having a more verbose representation in the graph
rather than just deriving it automatically and regularly as needed.

After all, a string *is* a sequence already. That's part of its definition.
No need to make explicit what can be left implicit and reliably obtained
as needed. It's all about which is more expensive. I.e., whether you'd
be dissecting the literals or concatenating the characters more often.

Looks like a really useful ontology for operating on the component
characters of literals, but not IMO for a graph-native representation 
of literals.

Otherwise, why not do the same for all labels, including URIs?! ;-)

Cheers,

Patrick

--
Patrick Stickler                      Phone:  +358 3 356 0209
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Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 06:48:21 UTC