[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: more QName madness

• To: "Tim Bray" <tbray@t...>, "John Cowan" <jcowan@r...>
• Subject: Re: more QName madness
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>
• Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 17:43:35 -0500
• Cc: "W. E. Perry" <wperry@f...>, "XML DEV" <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <200211141440.JAA06214@m...> <3DD3C396.2080703@t...>

Tim Bray wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
>
> > I do not understand the URIs Good, QNames
> > Bad point of view, since they are plainly isomorphic.  Indeed, RDF
defines
> > a two-way mapping between QNames and (some) URIs.
>
> I don't think so.  RDF defines such a mapping, but (for example)
> XSchema, which allows  identification of type by qname, does not.  I
> might be a little less nervous about qname proliferation if they were in
> fact isomorphic to URIs.

I hear the "QName in attribute values are bad" argument but cannot bring
myself to accept it. QNames are, perhaps, better syntactic identifiers than
URIs -- at least my human eyes greatly prefer them to longhand URIs.
XPath/XSLT demonstrates the success of QNames in attributes. Aside from the
issues surrounding the current XML Schema inability to provide a URI for a
QName type, _reading_ <foo xsi:type="xsd:integer">34</foo> is a heck of alot
better than reading <foo
xsuri:type="http:.//www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#integer">34</foo>!!

>
> >   It would be more consistent
> > for you to attack URIs, QNames, and IP addresses, all of which are
> > universal agreements creating global names,
>
> Well, such universal agreements are expensive.  We have two: the IP
> address space and the DNS.  We hace a universal naming scheme, the URI,
> that builds on these.  Can we please stop and not invent any more?
>

Fair enough -- which is exactly *why* we need a standard mapping of QNames
to URIs and back as I've suggested in
http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/#rdfms-qname-uri-mapping
and
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Jan/0178.html
and
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/ilist#rdfmsQnameUriMapping-6

Now since your are the issue owner :-) if you can solve this problem I'd be
very very happy to show you how RPV can be made -even more readable-

Just allowing QNames rather than URIrefs in the current RDF/XML would fix
alot of the readability issues e.g. as I've suggested long ago:
http://www.openhealth.org/RDF/RDFSurfaceSyntax.html

However I agree that demonstrating the triples explicitly as in RPV or
N-Triples/N3 makes RDF alot more readable for humans - in particular N3's
combination of explicit triples and QNames.

Jonathan

http://www.jonathanborden-md.com
http://www.erieneurosurgery.com
http://www.openhealth.org

• References:
  • Re: more QName madness
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
  • Re: more QName madness
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

• Prev by Date: Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic systems
• Next by Date: Re: RDF and the new releases
• Previous by thread: Re: more QName madness
• Next by thread: Re: more QName madness
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread