RE: [rdfmsQnameUriMapping-6] CLOSED: Algorithm for creating a URI from a QName?

I don't know if this helps, but it was informative to me.

http://mally.stanford.edu/theory.html

Ernst Mally makes the distinction between "exemplifying" 
and "encoding" a property.  

"Mally's distinction between exemplifying and encoding a property is
formally represented in the theory as the distinction between the atomic
formulas `Fx' (`x exemplifies F') and `xF' (`x encodes F')."

http://mally.stanford.edu/distinction.html

The example is given that one should not say "Sherlock Holmes IS a
detective" given 
that Holmes is fictional and this assignment should be 
reserved for real, not fictional or abstract properties.
Instead, Mally proposed the operator "encodes" such 
that when one states this, one is saying that Holmes 
has the pattern properties of a detective.

"Whereas we can identify and individuate concrete objects in terms of their
spatiotemporal location, we must identify and individuate abstract objects
in some other way, for abstract objects are not the kind of thing that could
have a location in spacetime. Encoding provides the means of identifying and
individuating abstract objects. The properties that an abstract object
encodes are part of its intrinsic nature---they are even more essential to
it than the properties that such objects exemplify necessarily."

Would one then say when defining resources that a 
resource 'encodes' its representations.  That would 
be particularly true of elements and attributes, it seems.

"To extend Mally's idea to its logical conclusion, therefore, we simply
assert the following two principles: 

For each group of properties, there is an abstract object that encodes just
the properties in that group. 
Abstract objects x and y are identical if and only they (necessarily) encode
the same properties."

len

From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@textuality.com]

The Namespaces Rec succeeds in making XML vocabularies into Web 
resources.  It did not attempt to make elements and attributes, as 
abstractions, into Web resources. That would have been a worthy goal, 
but would have required the invention of quite a bit more new 
technology.

Received on Wednesday, 10 December 2003 15:39:41 UTC