

rdf:parseType="Literal" and XML Fragment interchange

From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 09:54:18 -0500
Message-ID: <3B7BDE9A.53D892A7@w3.org>
To: www-xml-fragment-comments@w3.org
CC: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
RDF syntax has a mechanism[1] for saying "here's a hunk
of XML to be used as the value of a property"; implementors
have raised issues with the way it's specified[2,3].


At a recent FTF meeting[4], it seemed that the XML Fragments
spec might provide a solution to these issues, but we weren't
sure how.

Would you (the fragments editors) please take a look at the
example in [1] below? I'd like to know what it would
look like if you took the contents of the dc:Title
element and wrapped it per the XML Fragment interchage

Could the result take the form of a string (character sequence)
that, when parsed per the fragments spec, gives back
all the relevant information, like namespaces, xml:lang, etc?


7.5. Values Containing Markup

When a property value is a literal that contains XML markup, the
syntax is used to signal to the RDF interpreter not to interpret the
markup but
rather to retain it as part of the value. The precise representation of
resulting value is not specified here.

In the following example, the value of the Title property is a literal
some MATHML markup.


  <dc:Title rdf:parseType="Literal">
    Ramifications of
    to World Peace
  <dc:Creator>David Hume</dc:Creator>

--        Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax
Wed, 24 Feb 1999 14:45:07 GMT

excerpt from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20010801-f2f/



It was suggested that there had been basic agreement on the mailing
list, that
literals with a parseType of "Literal" would be treated as strings, but
the model
would contain further information. There are many details to work out,
but this
is the basic principle. A list of components that would have to be in
the model
was started:

     the string 
     parseType (string or QName) 
     base URI 

A number of different approaches were identified:

     the XML in the input document must be self sufficient (an
     parser adds namespaces (an incomplete solution) 
     replace the literal with an infoset representation of RDF 
     serialise the infoset to a string 
     use XML fragments 
     deprecate and represent as CDATA 

It was suggested that parseType="Literal" could be dropped but Ron
Daniel and
Eric Miller spoke up that there are users who use it. It was suggested
that the
parser adding namespace definitions to the literal might break an XML
signature. Concern was raised over entities in the literal. The
existence of the
xml fragments work was noted.


Received on Thursday, 16 August 2001 10:54:20 EDT
